• Organisation
  • SERVICE PROVIDER

Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust

This is an organisation that runs the health and social care services we inspect

Overall: Requires improvement read more about inspection ratings
Important: We are carrying out checks on locations registered by this provider. We will publish the reports when our checks are complete.

Report from 31 January 2025 assessment

Ratings - Acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units

  • Overall

    Requires improvement

  • Safe

    Inadequate

  • Effective

    Requires improvement

  • Caring

    Requires improvement

  • Responsive

    Requires improvement

  • Well-led

    Requires improvement

Our view of the service

Date of assessment: 30 October to 21 November 2024. This assessment was in response to concerns following a serious incident. We found the service required improvement and identified 3 breaches of the regulations in relation to safe care and treatment, good governance and staffing. The Trust's systems and processes had failed to identify, manage and mitigate some areas of risk. Audits, checks and learning from incidents were not always effective in ensuring continuous improvement. The Trust had not trained enough staff in immediate life support. Staff were not always aware of people’s risks and how to manage these. Some staff did not know how learning from incidents was shared to make improvements and were not aware of the wards ligature risk assessments. We issued warning notices to the provider following this assessment for the 3 breaches identified.

People's experience of this service

People told us they felt safe on the wards. People gave us mixed feedback about being involved in their risk assessments. Some people said they and their families were involved while others said they were not. People said staff helped them to feel safe and supported them. However, they said that sometimes there were not enough staff to take them out on escorted leave from the hospital. Some people said that some bank staff did not know them or their care and treatment needs, which made them feel unsafe.