MENTAL health services at Birmingham Women and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has changed from inadequate to requires improvement.
The Care Quality Commission carried out the inspection to check if improvements had been made since the previous inspection when the service was rated inadequate overall.
Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust is responsible for managing Forward-Thinking Birmingham.
Forward Thinking Birmingham is one of the largest child and adolescent mental health services in England.
It has a dedicated inpatient eating disorder and acute assessment unit for regional referrals of children and young people with the most serious mental health concerns and provides community mental health services for 0–25-year-olds.
Following the inspection, as well as the overall rating for community mental health services for children and young people, the ratings for safe, responsive and well-led have also moved up from inadequate to requires improvement.
Amanda Lyndon, CQC deputy director of operations in the Midlands, said: “Not enough action had been taken since our previous inspection to ensure the premises were fit for purpose for children and young people.
“Staff had raised concerns about disabled access sites, children and adults sharing facilities, a lack of clinical space, and important equipment being unusable.
“It was also concerning that teams didn’t have access to the full range of specialists required to meet the needs of children and young people.”
The report said there were nursing, multidisciplinary team and consultant vacancies which impacted waiting lists.
Ms Lyndon added: “However, it was positive that improvements had been made to how staff managed risk and learned from incidents.
“We saw some good examples of staff working well with services outside the trust, especially regarding safeguarding. The trust had specialist safeguarding nurses who offered support across the service.
“We will continue to monitor the trust, including through future inspections, to ensure further improvements are made so people can receive safe and appropriate care.”
