Lea Court

Updated 27 February 2024

Lea Court provides services for male and female patients with mental health needs who required rehabilitation. It is managed by the Alternative Futures Group who also have a number of other mental health hospital and community services within the north west of England.

Lea Court is a 26 bedded hospital and provides rehabilitation to both patients detained under the Mental Health Act and informal patients.

The service is registered to provide the regulated activities of:

- Treatment of disease, disorder or injury

- Assessment or medical treatment for persons detained under the MHA 1983

- Diagnostic and screening procedures.

The service had a Registered Manager who was also the Controlled Drugs Accountable Officer.

Lea Court has been registered with CQC since 21 December 2010. There have been 6 previous inspections at Lea Court, the most recent being in May / June 2018. At that inspection the hospital was rated good overall and across all five key questions we asked. No regulatory breaches were identified at the 2018 inspection.

The most recent Mental Health Act monitoring visit to the hospital took place in September 2023. No actions for the provider to address were identified during this visit.

What people who use the service say

We spoke with 7 people who used the service and 2 carers of people who were using the service.

Patients gave positive feedback about the care and treatment they were receiving. Patients felt safe in the hospital and that staff were caring and responsive to their needs. Patients were happy with the environment and described it as clean.

One patient raised a concern that staff could be inconsistent with their approaches in respect of certain rules and expectations within the service, such as access to the laundry room or being given access to food at certain times.

Carers also gave positive feedback about the hospital. Carers were happy with the care and treatment provided to their loved ones and felt that staff were caring. One carer noted that they would like more written information from the service and to be more involved in care planning for their loved one.

Updated 27 February 2024

Our rating of this location stayed the same. We rated it as good because:

• Patients gave positive feedback about the care and treatment they received from the service. Patients felt safe in the hospital and described staff as kind, caring and attentive to their needs. Patients were engaged and listened to by staff. Staff included and informed patients about their care and treatment.
• The service had made improvements in respect of staffing issues and was reducing the usage of agency staff. The service had reducing vacancy rates and was continuing to recruit to vacant posts. Staff sickness and turnover rates were reducing.
• Staff were positive about working in the service and felt supported by management and as a team. We observed positive interactions between staff and patients including when patient behaviours started to escalate. Managers were aware of how to support staff and encouraged a positive working environment.
• There was evidence of occupational therapy involvement throughout patient records. Patients gave positive feedback about the engagement and work done by the Occupational Therapist, along with the activities that were on offer in the service. There was also evidence of ongoing monitoring, checks and support regarding physical health and this was documented in patient records.

However:

• There was no overarching care plan in 1 of the 6 patient records that we reviewed in either the paper folder or the electronic record, despite the patient being in the service since August. The front sheet of the paper folder had indicated that this was not present as per a review of the folder on the 11 November. Whilst this had been identified in the file review, it was not clear how this was escalated or identified for action.
• There were inconsistencies and gaps identified with some of the processes around governance and audit. For example, when we reviewed some of the agency checklist templates, 1 of the forms had not been fully completed and it was confirmed there was no audit or checking of these forms. We also identified issues with the completion of daily bedroom checklists where some of the forms had not been dated or recorded who had completed the checklist. There were also some environmental risk assessments which had not been completed and were in the process of being updated.
• During the tour there were some rooms that were locked which were noted that they should have been open. It was not clear as to why the rooms were locked or for how long they had been locked. There was no specific audit of potential blanket restrictions for the hospital as a whole to understand where these issues may be occurring, although the service had had a restrictive practices audit in February 2023 and most patients we spoke to did not raise any concerns about restrictions.

Updated 27 February 2024

Our rating of this service stayed the same. We rated it as good. See the summary above for details.