St Andrews Healthcare Northampton

We identified some concerns around staffing which had impacted upon the care of young people which will require an action plan. We identified that there was not always enough staff to meet the individual needs of young people. A high number of non-substantive staff were being used to staff the ward, some of which were unfamiliar with the young people and specific needs. Staff told us that there was not always enough staff on the ward to safely manage incidents, and at times when they had requested additional support from across the hospital via an alarm call, there had been delays with staff attending. The hospital had a procedure in place regarding learning from incidents. There were different forums where incidents were discussed. We saw that there had been a learning alert following an incident whereby a young person had engaged in deliberate self-harm. The alert was available to staff on the ward. Registered staff were able to clearly discuss some learning from incidents. However, some unregistered staff we spoke with could not give recent examples, although some had taken some learning points away following discussions during handovers. The hospital has a procedure in place for the clinical management of referrals and admissions as required. Staff aimed to regularly review individual care plans and positive behavioural support plans with young people.