The CQC has published critical reports after unannounced inspections late last year into acute adult and older people’s mental health wards and psychiatric intensive care, the service is now rated unsafe and overall inadequate.
At the Sherwood Oaks complex in Mansfield and Highbury Hospital, an unspecified number of staff had assaulted patients. And at the Highbury facility in Bulwell, there were occasions where workers had falsified patient records.
A Nottingham MP says, it’s troubling.
Alex Norris MP Labour Nottingham North said:
‘I think, like the rest of the community, I was concerned to read what was in the report.
‘These are very important facilities that care for some of the most vulnerable people in our city and beyond and to read some of those things, as I say, were deeply concerning.
The Nottinghamshire Healthcare Trust has apologised and stressed improvements are ongoing.
Earlier this year, it emerged more than 30 staff across the organisation had been suspended.
It’s under intense scrutiny over its dealings with the Nottingham attacks killer Valdo Calocane. Last June, he fatally stabbed the school caretaker, Ian Coates, and students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, Grace’s father, has wider questions about the state of Nottingham’s mental health services.
He says today’s reports are terrible.
‘I’m horrified that there hasn’t been any improvement and in fact there has been the opposite. It’s just horrific. I think after the incident of last year, I think anyone who’s in a senior position would have thought something very horrific has happened. We better start looking at our services.’