A RECENT inspection by the Care Quality Commission has found Bradford District Care Trust requires improvement.

The inspection found Bradford District NHS Foundation Trust has the same rating as it did at the last inspection 18 months ago.

In areas of safety, effectiveness and being well-led, the trust was rated requires improvement, and it was rated Good for being caring and for its responsiveness.

The trust provides mental health, community health and specialist learning disability services in the Bradford district and in Airedale, Craven and Wakefield.

It serves a population of more than 915,000 people - the most diverse in the country - with more than 100 languages spoken.

In the report, the CQC said: “The trust did not have effective systems in place to investigate incidents within appropriate timescales to identify learning from incidents and make improvements.

“The arrangements for governance and performance management did not always operate effectively.

“Whilst there had been a recent review of governance arrangements the plans to change these were in the early stages and were not embedded at the time of the inspection

“CQC rated community health services as outstanding overall for caring. Inspectors rated community end of life care services as outstanding overall. Two of the trust’s services are rated as outstanding for caring, and 11 were rated as good.

“Due to the concerns found during the inspection of the trust’s acute inpatient mental health wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care unit, CQC used its powers to take immediate enforcement action. CQC inspectors issued the trust with a warning notice, advising the trust our findings indicated a need for significant improvement in the quality of healthcare.

“CQC will revisit these services to check that appropriate action has been taken and that quality of care has improved.

“It was encouraging to note that by the time of the well-led review the trust had already taken significant action to address the issues identified in the warning notice.”

Brent Kilmurray, chief executive of Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The report acknowledges areas of outstanding practice including activity on our secure wards to better support patient’s recovery, innovative work in our mental health crisis service, and initiatives in our end of life care for hard to reach groups.

“It also rightly recognises that our staff are kind and compassionate and the Trust’s positive, values-based culture.

“The CQC also identified important areas for improvement and we acted quickly to address these. This work continues as we embed a Trust-wide approach to continuous quality improvement, with robust audits at every level, to ensure we’re on track.

“Reviewing key systems and processes will give additional oversight and assurance, and further strengthen this approach.”