Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust

We inspected this service as part of the comprehensive inspection programme. We carried out an announced visit from 7 to 11 March and we carried out unannounced visits on 13 and 24 March 2016.

During our announced visit, we carried out a full inspection of the trust testing whether services are safe, efective, caring, responsive to people’s needs and well led. We looked at all the services it provided. We inspected community inpatient services; services for adults; services for children, young people and their families; end-of life-care services; CAMHS, community substance misuse, minor injury units (MIU) and dental services.

The community substance misuse service was due to transfer to a new provider on 1 April 2016. During our inspection we became concerned in relation to some of the governance systems in the service. For example, the prescribing GP had had no formal clinical supervision from the trust’s medical director since June 2015 (nine months). The UK Guidelines on Clinical Management states; that all NHS staf have an obligation to update their knowledge and skills base and to be appraised regularly. We used our statutory powers to requested further information from the trust regarding this service.

Overall, we rated the trust as Requires Improvement for Safe, Efective, Responsive and Well-Led, and we rated it as good for Caring.