Teenage girl kept in seclusion and fed through a hatch in hospital for two years

A privately-run mental health hospital has been placed in special measures after inspectors found vulnerable children were kept in unsafe seclusion units.

St Andrew’s Healthcare Adolescent Service in Northamptonshire has been rated “Inadequate” following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The hospital, which is routinely commissioned by NHS England and local authorities to care for vulnerable patients, has been told it must make a number of improvements, including treating “patients with kindness, respect and dignity”.

Inspectors raised a number of concerns about the use of seclusion and segregation and found that care had deteriorated since previous inspections.

The hospital has faced scrutiny since last year when it was revealed that one patient, a teenage girl called Bethany, had been kept in seclusion for more than two years, at times being fed through a hatch.

The CQC found that seclusion spaces were “not always safe” and that patients were not always treated with “dignity, compassion or respect”.

It cites the treatment of one female patient, who had to change clothes with male staff present, as “uncaring, undignified and disrespectful”.

Inspectors found seclusion rooms had sharp edges on door frames and exposed sharp metal, and blind spots that made it impossible for patients to be monitored.

They also observed “the majority of seclusion rooms did not have basic furnishings such as a bed, pillow, blanket or mattress, and records referred to patients as sitting or lying on the floor while in those rooms”.

“On one occasion, staff did not respect a patient’s privacy and dignity when changing her clothing. While female staff were present, there were also male staff there at the time. It was the inspection team’s view that this was uncaring, undignified and disrespectful to the patient,” it added.

They found that on three occasions patients were secluded for longer than necessary.

Paul Lelliott, the CQC’s mental health lead, said: “This is the third time that we have inspected St Andrew’s Healthcare Adolescents Service in the past two years. Over that time, the service has failed to address some of the concerns we have raised. In some important respects, the safety of care has deteriorated.

“We have told St Andrew’s Healthcare that it must take immediate action to address the problems we identified. We will continue to monitor the service closely and if urgent improvements are not made to ensure people are safe, we will take action to prevent the provider from operating this service.”

The report comes two weeks after the Government pledged to review all cases of segregation following a CQC review, and a highly critical report by the Children’s Commissioner.

Katie Fisher, chief executive, St Andrew’s Healthcare, said the hospital “deeply regretted” falling short of basic standards of care, and promised an internal review of the use of segregation.

“With particular reference to process surrounding seclusion and long-term segregation, we accept that we should have done better by our patients. We need a bigger rethink of our seclusion and long-term segregation process, so have begun a charity-wide review,” she said.

“We are confident that when the CQC returns to inspect the St Andrew’s Healthcare Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service in the next six months, they will see significant improvement that will be reflected in an improved rating.”

An NHS spokesperson said: “CQC are right to call out St Andrews, and frankly if they are going to continue to expect to be able to look after NHS funded patients they are going to have to improve their services, and quickly.”

(c) Sky News 2019: Teenage girl kept in seclusion and fed through a hatch in hospital for two years