Care watchdog sounds fresh alarm over mental health trust being investigated over 2,000 deaths

The NHS safety watchdog has sounded fresh alarm over the risk to mental health patients at an Essex health trust already facing a public inquiry over 2,000 deaths.

Essex Partnership University Foundation Trust [EPUT] is being investigated over failures relating to the deaths of patients spanning two decades.

The public inquiry was launched last month and replaced an independent review set up in 2020 into a string of patient deaths in the trust’s hospitals and over patients it cared for in the community between 2000 and 2020. It follows several investigations into safety failings by official bodies including Essex Police.

Now, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has said the trust is still failing to make improvements, with almost 4,000 new incidents of patients being put at risk.

In a new report, it flagged a slew of new concerns. They included evidence of patients being prevented from going outside within the trust’s adult mental health wards and examples of staff falling asleep or using their phones while they were meant to be watching vulnerable patients.

The report, published on Wednesday, also revealed an increasing number of concerns raised by staff internally with 129 issues reported from October to December last year – up from just 44 in April to June.

According to the CQC, there have been 3,849 patient safety incidents on the trust’s adult mental health wards, including five deaths.

The watchdog has also now rated the trust’s adult mental health wards and psychiatric intensive care units “inadequate” and warned they must make immediate improvements.

Patients told inspectors staff would speak in different languages during nightshifts and described some as “uncaring”, the report found,

On one ward, patients were unable to go outside into the garden and on another, patients could not access tea, coffee, snacks, and other drinks without staff’s assistance.

In addition to safety concerns, the CQC found some adult mental health wards were unclean with the showers and bathrooms “visibly dirty” and the overall environment “worn and gloomy”.

The CQC also found the trust had failed to report instances of racial abuse against staff by patients with workers saying it was “seen regularly and normal”.

Rob Assall, CQC’s director of operations in London and the east of England, said: “When we inspected the trust, we were very disappointed to find people’s safety being affected by many of the same issues we told the trust about at previous inspections. This is because leaders weren’t always creating a culture of learning across all levels of the organisation, meaning they didn’t ensure people’s care was continuously improving or that they were learning from events to ensure they didn’t happen again”.

Mr Assell said despite improvements made many of the actions “shouldn’t have taken them this long to address”.

A spokesperson for Essex Partnership University Trust said: “While we are naturally disappointed by the overall rating change, as the CQC acknowledged, we’re already working on a number of areas to improve services for those who rely on us, so that they receive the compassionate care they deserve.”

The trust said in the six months since the CQC’s visit there has been “significant progress” in working with patients and services users to improve care.

The latest warning comes after the government launched a separate national investigation into the safety of inpatient mental healthcare prompted by The Independent’s reporting on poor patient care.

That review is set to be carried out by a new patients’ safety body due to be established in the autumn.

The public inquiry into deaths at EPUT is due to be launched later this year, however, the trust has faced several warnings over deaths and patients’ safety across its services.

This included a warning from the Parliamentary Health Service ombudsman in 2018, a warning from Essex police following a criminal investigation and a prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive for failing to address ligature risks.

Last year a number of the trust’s adult mental health wards were subject to an undercover exposé by Channel 4 Dispatches, revealing allegations of abuse and overuse of restraint.