- SERVICE PROVIDER
Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust
This is an organisation that runs the health and social care services we inspect
Report from 12 December 2025 assessment
Ratings - Perinatal services
Our view of the service
We carried out an unannounced inspection of the trust’s specialist perinatal mental health service between 26 and 28 August 2025. The service consists of one perinatal inpatient ward, Ribblemere Ward at Chorley Hospital, and 3 specialist perinatal Community Mental Health teams at Lancaster, Leyland and Blackburn. The ward has 8 beds for women experiencing mental health problems during the perinatal period (from 32 weeks gestation to 1 year post birth). The beds are currently under specialist commissioning.
We gathered information from patients and their loved ones, staff and managers, other stakeholders and our own observations of care. We reviewed a range of documents including care records, policies and procedures. We looked at all quality statements.
The assessment was carried out as the service had registered with us in 2018 and had not yet been inspected. We did not receive any concerns about the service prior to our visit.
Mental Health Act and Mental Capacity Act Compliance Summary
Over 95% of staff had completed training in the Mental Health Act and the Mental Capacity Act.
Staff understood their roles and responsibilities under the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Mental Health Act Code of Practice and discharged these well.
People's experience of this service
During our on-site assessment, we spoke with 8 patients and 4 carers. We received universally positive feedback about the service in terms of the care the patients received, some of which are detailed below:
‘Support is very good - made me feel at home’
‘Brilliant approach to patients’
‘knows she will always have support following discharge’
‘absolutely fantastic’
“Someone is always available’
We reviewed feedback from patients on the service’s ‘friends and family test’ for all teams and found that between September 2024 to the date of our assessment there had been 397 responses across the ward and the 3 community services. Every team was above 90% positive with Pennine Community team receiving over 99% positive comments from 102 responses.
Comments included:
“I've never had the help like I've received, absolutely amazing service”
“An amazing service that I wouldn't have got through last 15 months without them”
“I wouldn’t be where I am mentally or emotionally if I hadn’t accessed services when I did”
“All of the professionals I have worked with from the team have been brilliant. They were all helpful, supportive, non-judgemental and understanding”
“This service helped me become well again, and for that I will be forever grateful”
Staff attitudes and behaviours when interacting with patients showed that they were discreet, respectful and responsive, providing patients with help, emotional support and advice at the time they needed it. The overwhelming theme from feedback was that patients felt like they were well supported, listened to and their views and opinions really mattered.