Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust CQC rating: 'requires improvement'

The trust employs more than 4,000 staff across 80 services

The NHS trust that provides mental health services in Cornwall has been given a "requires improvement" rating by the official regulator.

Patient safety was at risk at several Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust services due to staffing problems, an inspection found.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) found care was "outstanding" but some buildings were "not fit for purpose".

The trust apologised and said it had put an action plan into place.

The overall rating for the trust moved from "good" to "requires improvement" after a short notice CQC inspection of several services in March.

These included mental health wards for adults and the psychiatric care unit, adult mental health community services, specialist community mental health services for children and young people and the child and adolescent inpatient wards.

The safety rating for specialist community mental health services for children and young people remained "inadequate".

The child and adolescent mental health wards, which were inspected for the first time, were rated "good".

Karen Bennett-Wilson, CQC's director of operations for the south, said the inspection found "three main concerns which the trust needs to rectify rapidly".

These were around the poor state of buildings, and staffing problems leading to issues with record keeping and long patient waiting times.

'Not fit for purpose'

Ms Bennett-Wilson said environments at a number of locations were "in a poor condition and not fit for purpose," which was a safety risk for patients.

She said: "Staff were doing their utmost to provide safe and effective care, going above and beyond the call of duty to treat patients with kindness and dignity".

However, she added that the lack of permanent staff on the wards posed a risk to patient safety as agency staff did not always have access to patient records.

"Lastly, the staffing issues lead to long delays in treatment time, particularly in the specialist services... Parents and carers told inspectors there were longs wait for therapy and they had to push to be seen," he said.

'Very sorry'

Debbie Richards, the Trust's new CEO, said: "Overall, the report's findings are very disappointing, and we are very sorry.

"We must do better and know we must do better. For every aspect of the organisation criticised in the report, we have put an action plan in place," she said.

She added that "certain problem areas had already been addressed" and pointed out the regulator had acknowledged some issues were "not within our complete control, such as the repairing of rented buildings".