- Independent mental health service
The Langford Centre
Report from 25 June 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings - Acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units
Our view of the service
The Langford Centre provides low secure forensic, high-dependency rehabilitation and acute inpatient mental health services to male and female working-age adults. Most patients are detained under the Mental Health Act (1983). The service is provided by Bramley Health Limited. The hospital is purpose built and provides seventy-six beds over six wards. We carried out a responsive assessment of the Acute wards for adults of working age at the Langford Centre following a series of concerns around poor medicines management, poor safeguarding practices, staff competencies around safe and therapeutic observation, and increased number of patient incidents. The service consisted of three wards. Arlington ward is a 10-bed ward for females. Cooden ward is a 15-bed ward for males and Fairlight ward is a 16-bed ward for females. The service was last inspected in March 2023 and rated requires improvement overall. We published the report based on the Care Quality Commission (CQC) old inspection approach using key lines of enquiry (KLOEs), prompts and ratings characteristics.
This assessment has been completed following the CQC’s new approach to assessment, the Single Assessment Framework (SAF). We carried out our on-site assessment on 9 and 10 July 2024. This was an unannounced assessment, which meant the provider was unaware of our assessment visit. We assessed against the two key questions ‘are the Acute wards for adults of working age adults Safe?’ and ‘are the Acute wards for working age adults well-led?’ and awarded a rating under each of these key questions. We did not inspect the key questions effective, caring or responsive at this inspection. The ratings for effective, caring and responsive were awarded at the previous inspection of the service and have been used to aggregate an overall rating. Our overall rating of this service stayed the same. We rated it as requires improvement because the provider did not ensure that people’s medicines were managed well, the environment was not always clean and well maintained and governance processes were not always effective. We identified breaches of Regulations 12 and 17 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.
People's experience of this service
We spoke with 10 people who used the service and two carers. People’s experience of the service was generally positive. People said there was always enough staff, and that staff were kind, compassionate and supportive. People said that the wards were safe. They said staff looked after them well and the food was healthy and of good quality. People said they could give feedback about the service. Carers reported that staff actively involved them in decision making processes. However, people reported that their care plans were not relevant to them, and they only signed the care plans because they had to. People said they were not involved in decisions around their medication and treatment, and the doctors often changed their medication without prior notice. Some people reported that they could not always go out to smoke because staff were too busy.