Mental health services are ‘excellent’

Mental health services for Rochdale have been rated ‘excellent’ for the second year running by the government watchdog in charge of the NHS.

Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, which provides a range of mental health services across Rochdale scored the top grade of ‘excellent’ for ‘quality of services’ in the Healthcare Commission’s Annual Health Check.

The Annual Health Check assesses NHS Trusts on all aspects of the care that they deliver, including the quality of the services they provide to patients and the public, and how well they manage their finances and other resources, such as their property and staff.
Pennine Care has once again scored highly across all of its new and existing targets, working in partnership with NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale and Rochdale Council, providing new forms of home treatment for people who would previously have had to go to hospital. This has included an additional investment of 24 hour crisis resolution services.

As well as the ‘excellent’ rating for service quality, the Trust also scored ‘good’ for its ‘use of resources’ for the second year running, after once again achieving all of its financial targets.

The Health Check score comes hot on the heels of Pennine Care’s high performance in the recent review of its inpatient services. These services received the second highest grade possible, bettered only by a handful of Trusts across the country.

John Archer, Chief Executive of Pennine Care said: “I am delighted that once again the Healthcare Commission have recognised the excellent services that Pennine Care provides. It is a privilege to lead an organisation with such a dedicated and capable staff who are consistently providing services of the highest quality to patients. This year we’ve made some fantastic strides, investing heavily in community mental health teams, and implementing a multi-million pound investment programme which has wiped out all the backlog maintenance in all of our buildings.”

In July, Pennine Care became the 100th NHS Foundation Trust, recognising excellent performance and financial management, and giving the Trust more freedom to deliver innovative services.

As a Foundation Trust, Pennine Care has worked to attract over 11,000 members, including over 8,000 members of the public, who have their say in the way that services develop. Elections were held earlier this year to elect a ‘Council of Members’ who play a big role in service developments in mental health across the area.

Mr Archer continued: “As a Foundation Trust, we are answerable directly to the local public through the membership. In the future this will make us even more responsive to local needs. We are already looking forward to enhanced services in the coming year, including a new intensive rehabilitation service, a new residential service for women with personality disorders, and more psychological therapies to help local people overcome trauma, stress and the consequences of physical illnesses. This is an exciting time for Pennine Care and I am confident that we will continue to deliver excellent services for local people.”