The Hamptons prides itself on delivering first-class care in a supportive and comfortable environment for men who are experiencing a complex range of mental health issues. We work exceptionally hard to deliver personalised long-term support and specialist rehabilitation to our service users, enabling them to be the experts in their own mental health.
The feedback, opinions, and preferences of our service users is of utmost importance to us – this is why we always include them in 360 feedback in team appraisals, and our other Governance and Operational forums. We were therefore pleased that the Care Quality Commission’s report detailed extensive positive patient feedback given to the inspectors on the day of their visit:
This included:
“Patients told [inspectors] it was the best service they had been to, better than previous placements. They saw their consultant regularly and had access to the advocate who they found helpful. Patients told us they had one to one time with their named nurse. All patients we spoke with knew what their discharge plan was.”
“All the carers [inspectors] spoke with were positive about the service, especially in relation to the previous placements their loved ones had been in. Carers were given information about the service, invited to meetings and sent minutes if they could not attend. Carers were pleased with the variety of multidisciplinary team members that their loved one had access to, to aid their recovery.”
“Patients spoke positively about the service, including the improvement in the food, following a new chef starting.”
We were also pleased that, in their latest inspection report, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) also recognised the expertise of our staff in assessing and managing risk, the strength of our safeguarding practice, and our safe medicines management processes.
Given this overwhelmingly positive response from those closest to our services, and the additional significant positive feedback from the CQC inspectors themselves, we were surprised and disappointed to read some of the CQC’s negative feedback. We do not believe that the CQC’s review fairly or accurately reflects the performance of our hospital, the processes and safeguards we have in place to protect service users, or the expertise of our teams.
We have therefore challenged both the accuracy and proportionality of the CQC’s most recent inspection report, which we do not believe meets their own threshold for a rating of this kind. We will also be making a complaint to the CQC over their failure to follow their policy following an extensive factual accuracy check of the report.
In particular, we have raised our concerns that the CQC inspectors either misunderstood or did not engage fully with our ways of working at the time of their visit – including the fact that our staffing and resource is shared between both our Hamptons and Brookhaven services, which are adjacent. This has always been the case – including when we have received ‘outstanding’ ratings from the CQC – and is based on extensive risk assessments and determining what is most suitable for our specific service user group.
Our team provided substantial evidence on record-keeping, staffing and training to inspectors during their visit, and immediately afterwards, to allay their concerns. We have also since raised with the CQC our frustration at their lack of proportionality concerning elements of training delivered.
Thus far, we have been disappointed that the CQC have not engaged with our legitimate concerns.
Whilst we continue to raise these concerns with the CQC, we are continuing to work hard to ensure that our record-keeping, Governance and training processes are of the high standards we hold ourselves to, and which our service users and their families rightly deserve.
Our priority remains keeping those in our care safe and supported to achieve their goals.