Wards treating adults in mental health crisis in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough have been told to improve by the Care Quality Commission. 

The independent regulator issued the 'requires improvement' rating following an inspection of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust wards in March. 

While the acute wards and PICU are rated as a single service, the inspection only examined the trust’s acute wards, based at Fulbourn Hospital in Cambridge and the Cavell Centre in Peterborough.

The inspection was prompted in part by concerns shared with the CQC about the service not always learning from incidents impacting people's safety.

As well as again being rated requires improvement overall, the service was also told to improve in the area of safety. 

It was, however, rated 'good' in the effective, caring, and responsive category. 

According to the inspector's report, some staff claimed they received verbal racial abuse from people in their care but didn’t feel reporting these incidents would result in any change.

Individuals were given daily opportunities to raise concerns, but inspectors report seeing no record of leaders acting on people’s feedback from these meetings. 

Stuart Dunn, CQC deputy director of operations in the East of England, said: “When we inspected the trust’s acute wards, we found the service hadn’t made all the improvements we recommended at our last inspection in October 2022 to keep people safe.

"The service wasn’t always sharing lessons from safety incidents between different wards, and we found observation records weren’t always updated accurately or quickly, risking people’s needs being missed. 

“We also found that there weren’t always enough staff to meet people’s needs safely, and not all staff had the training they needed.

"However, the service was carrying out a proactive recruitment campaign, and we did see leaders ensured agency staff were familiar with the people they cared for.  

He added: “We also saw staff provided person-centred care adapted to people’s individual needs, and most people told us staff were kind and supportive. 

“We’ve shared our findings with the trust so they know where improvements are needed. We’ll continue to monitor this service closely, including through further inspections.” 

Rachel Gomm, interim chief nurse at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, said: “It is important to acknowledge the progress that has been made since the last inspection by the Care Quality Commission. Our staff have worked incredibly hard to improve the care and treatment available on our inpatient mental health wards.

“While we fully accept there is still work to do, it is my firm belief that we are heading in the right direction. The support we offer to patients and their families is key, and we appreciate the many kind and supportive comments patients have made about their daily interactions with our staff.

“Inpatient mental health care is an important part of our organisation’s work, alongside this we also provide community mental health treatment for adults, children’s mental health services, community physical health care for older people and those with long term conditions, children’s health services, learning disability services and conduct ground-breaking research.

“Our overall CQC rating remains ‘good’.”