Recovery & Support Team Review
This service is run by South West London & St George's Mental Health NHS Trust. During our visits, we spoke to patients and staff about their views and experiences with the Recovery & Support Team. We also observed patient care and physical aspects of the ward environment.
Summary
This report demonstrates how we have approached the setting and illustrates the experiences collected from 39 patients and 16 carers. Our analysis lead to identify the following key findings:
- Generally, patients and carers recognised that staff at the Trust work hard and carry out a good job.
- Patients generally felt informed and involved in decisions made around medication options whilst a few felt that the discharge process was not processed as collaboratively.
- High staff turnover and recruitment issues affect some patients' continuity of care negatively.
- Some patients experienced difficulties with contacting the team, meaning their confidence accessing support was impeded.
- Most patients expressed desires to see therapy being utilised fully in their recovery work but long waiting times affected their ability to do so.
- Reviewing the trust's recruitment strategy and guidelines for agency staff.
- Making improvements to the contact centre
- Improving communication protocols for RST nurses and doctors.
- Ensuring that all patients may access alternative local points of therapy
Downloads
South West London St George's Mental Health Trust did not meet their statutory duty to respond to recommendations from Healthwatch Richmond within 20 working days. As a result of missing this deadline and the fragmentation with which a response was provided, the publication of this report was substantially delayed.
The Trust provided an action plan for improvement however, due to time constraints we could not be assured that the actions proposed will improve patient care.
Find the action plan the Trust committed to, based on our recommendations available in the full report below.
