The mental health trust running the Edenfield Centre in Prestwich has been issued with a warning notice to improve by the health care watchdog.
The Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust (GMMH) has been told it must make significant improvements to the quality of its services following inspections by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) earlier this year.
During its inspection, the CQC says it found a deterioration in how well-led the trust was, which was having a significant impact on the standard of care being delivered to people using their services.
Unannounced inspections were carried out at acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units (PICU), forensic inpatient and secure wards, and mental health crisis services and health-based places of safety in June after concerns were received about safety and quality of care.
The CQC carried out an announced inspection in July but says further inspections of some services is now necessary.
The watchdog has taken enforcement action, serving the trust with two Section 29A warning notices - one relating to ligature and fire risks, and another relating to staffing and governance, requiring significant improvements within a set timescale.
A further inspection will be carried out to ensure action has been taken to comply with the warning notices but CQC will continue to monitor the progress of the other areas for improvement.
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The trust's overall rating has been suspended until the CQC returns to carry-out further trust-wide well-led inspection.
Following the June inspection, the overall rating for the acute wards for adults and PICUs has deteriorated from good to inadequate.
The safe and well led domains also dropped to inadequate. The ratings for effective, caring and responsive moved from "good" to "requires improvement".
The overall rating for forensic inpatient and secure wards dropped from good to inadequate, as have the safe and well-led ratings.
How effective, caring and responsive the service is has declined from "good" to "requires improvement".
However, the mental health crisis services and health-based places of safety remained rated as good overall and for being safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.
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The CQC’s director of operations network north, Ann Ford said the report found the trust "hadn’t taken action to remove risks" to ensure patient safety.
She said: “Not all ward environments we saw were safe and clean and we had significant concerns about the fire safety on some wards.
"They didn’t identify all risks or effectively mitigate them to keep people safe."
"However, we did see some really good care and management in the mental health crisis team, with staff and managers displaying the values of the trust and working well together, and with external agencies to provide timely and compassionate care for people.
“Other leaders at the trust should look to this service to see what learning can be applied to other departments
A spokesperson for Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust said: “We accept the findings of the CQC’s recent inspections at our Trust and are committed to making the changes and improvements that our service users deserve.
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“Work is already underway in order to build better and more sustainable services.
"Our Single Improvement Plan incorporates a range of immediate actions identified in recent weeks, alongside various longer-term ambitions.
"Furthermore, our enrolment in the NHS England Recovery Support Programme will provide us with access to additional expertise and resource to ensure that sustainable improvements are made as quickly as possible.
"We are pleased that the CQC did find that a number of our key services, including our mental health crisis services and health-based places of safety, demonstrate good care and management.
Going forward, we are determined to build upon these areas of best practice.”
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