A hospital in Bury has become one of the first child and adolescent mental health services (CAMH) in the country to complete a type of trial.

Cygnet Hospital Bury’s Primrose Ward has successfully finished a Safewards trial.

Safewards is an evidence-based clinical model with 10 interventions designed to improve the safety of people in inpatient mental health wards.

Previously it has only been implemented in adult services.

Primrose Ward was selected by NHS England to be one of 20 services from different organisations to take part in a national trial to implement Safewards in a CAMHS environment.

The ward is a CAMHS psychiatric intensive care unit for young people aged between 12 and 18.

The service provides for young people who exhibit a high level of risk that cannot be safely managed in a CAMHS general adolescent unit.

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Ward manager Jo Bible has led the team over the last 18 months to implement the ten Safewards strategies, all in co-production with the young people.

To date, they have fully implemented seven of the 10 interventions with work continuing on the remaining three.

Jo said: “I’m really proud of how the staff team and young people have taken on board the Safewards interventions.

“After a number of training sessions with Nick Horne, our Safewards Lead, we allocated staff leads to carry out each intervention.

“We then identified which of the young people would be best placed to be involved with each intervention.

“We discussed the interventions in community meetings and on a day-to-day basis with the young people.

“This has had a really positive effect on the ward in terms of increasing engagement.

“I’d like to thank all the young people for their participation.

“I also want to thank the entire ward team including senior support workers and our occupational therapy lead.”

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Cygnet Hospital, located on Bolton Road, provides a wide range of inpatient mental health services as well as specialist deaf services and CAHMS provision for adolescents.

Ali Curtis, Cygnet’s CAMHS nursing lead, said: “I’m so proud of what the team has achieved.

“It has not been an easy time managing a pandemic, staff changes, and some really unwell young people but the Primrose team have absolutely smashed it to complete their Safewards trial.”

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