THE NHS trust responsible for providing mental health care in Wiltshire must take significant steps to improve services, a new report says.

England’s chief inspector of hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, published his first report on the quality of services provided by Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, which follows an inspection in June.

The Care Quality Commission inspected 39 wards and 27 community services, as well as other specialist services, across Bristol, Wiltshire, Swindon, South Gloucestershire, North Somerset, and Bath and North East Somerset.

Overall it found staff were kind and caring and were skilled in the delivery of care. However, the inspection team had a number of concerns about safety; particularly on the mental health admission wards and forensic mental health wards.

The design of some wards made it difficult for staff to observe vulnerable patients and some wards had ligature points that could endanger people at risk of suicide.

There were also wards where male and female accommodation was not fully segregated.

The problems were compounded by staff shortages on some wards that the inspection team concluded may have affected patients’ care and safety, as well as there being times when beds were not available near a patient’s home.

The CQC pointed out its immediate concerns to the trust and has subsequently issued four warning notices requiring the trust to take urgent action to improve, including the trust failing to assess and monitor the quality of its services and failing to make changes after previous inspections.

The trust must now respond to a list of 32 areas highlighted for improvement.

Dr Paul Lelliott, Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals, said: “We had a number of concerns about safety – including unsafe ward environments that did not promote the dignity of patients, insufficient staffing levels to safely meet patients’ needs and inadequate arrangements for medication management.

“Some of these are not new and were known to the trust before our inspection – so it is a matter of concern that these issues have still not been addressed.”

AWP chief executive Iain Tulley said: “The trust is committed to improve quality and work with commissioners to get the best with the resources afforded us.

“I want to assure the public that we recognise where we have got deficiencies and where it has impacted people. As the report points out, we have inadequacies and we accept and we will address them.”