Trust criticised over waiting list for child mental health services

The Care Quality Commission found that while there were many examples of good practice, there were significant variations in the quality of the Trust’s services, with stretched staff struggling to meet demand.

CQC has told the Trust that it must take action to improve.

The Trust provides services to nearly 600,000 people in Hull, East Yorkshire, and parts of North and North East Lincolnshire and North Yorkshire.

Inspectors raised concerns about child and adolescent mental health services where children could be waiting for “many months” before they got help.

A CQC spokesman said: “In the mental health services, community teams had experienced a rise in referrals, which meant that people were on waiting lists for too long before their treatment started.

“There were also long waiting lists for paediatric speech and language therapy services. Community nurses were not meeting their four hour targets for urgent referrals, or the target for visiting new patients.”

The report noted that most of the Trust’s hospitals were well maintained although the mental health seclusion suites at Derwent and Ullswater at the Humber Centre were not in a good state of repair.

Inspectors identified ligature points within these suites that posed a risk to patients’ safety.

The inspection team, which included psychiatrists, specialist nurses and hospital managers spent five days at the Trust during May and June this year..

During the inspection, staff engagement was mixed, and depended on which service people worked in.

The Trust “must address the leadership and staff engagement issues within the children’s services,” according to the CQC.

The watchdog added: “The Trust must have an effective system in place to identify, and manage the risks among young people on its waiting lists.”

Professor Sir Mike Richards, chief inspector of hospitals said: “It is clear that the demand for their services is increasing, as it is across the NHS. While we have seen some examples of very good collaborative work and innovative practice – we found that the demand on the service was affecting the delivery of care and treatment, with waiting lists and caseloads growing.

“I note that the trust has taken action to address response times in community nursing services through the appointment of temporary workers. They will need to work with the commissioners to agree a longer term solution which provides high quality services for the people who depend on them.”

David Hill, the new chief executive of Humber NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The seven essential improvements detailed in the reports were flagged by the CQC at the time of the inspection and we either put these right or immediately started to make improvements.

“We will use the feedback from the CQC to continue to work with our staff and partners to create even more responsive, patient-centred services.”