Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust

We rated Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust as requires improvement overall because:

• Not all services were safe and the trust needed to take action to address areas of improvement. For example, some wards had fixtures and fittings that people at risk of suicide could use as a ligature anchor point; these potential risks had not been adequately assessed and addressed.
• The environments at some community based services did not fully promote the privacy, dignity and recovery of patients using these facilities
• The governance arrangements in place to take action following serious incidents that required investigation and trust wide learning were limited by the pace of investigations.
• We were informed and saw evidence that that beds for patients on leave would be used for new admissions and patients were being moved between wards and locations to accommodate new admissions. We were told by patients that having to sleep on other wards during their admission this made them anxious
• At Green Parks and Oxleas House mental health acute admission services, each ward had between 16 and 19 beds. In addition to this, they each had one surge bed. Staf said the surge beds were used daily. Records showed us that patients in those rooms had a length of stay ranging from two days to a week. All staf told us bed pressures were the biggest issue, and that the situation had been intense during the previous 12 months. When the demand for beds was high, patients were moved between areas.