Archived: Oasis Recovery Community Bradford

We found the following areas of good practice

• The environment at Oasis Recovery Community Bradford was clean, safe and well maintained and there was adequate staffing in the service. The low use of agency staff meant that patients received consistent care and treatment from staff that they were familiar with. The service had systems in place to assess and manage risk effectively. All patients had a risk management plans in place, including detailed contingency plans for patients that left treatment early. A doctor and a manager were on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to support staff and patients. The service recorded one serious incident and one accident in the last six months. We observed evidence of an investigation, feedback to staff and patients, and actions taken from the lessons learnt.

• The service had good systems in place to assess the patient prior to their admission to the service, and during their treatment. Staff worked in collaboration with the patient to agree a care plan in a one to one care plan meeting. All patients had a current care plan in place that they had signed and dated. Evidenced based psychological therapies, group-based interventions, medications and detox regimes recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence were used in the service. Staff with the necessary skills, experience, supervision and training administered and delivered this treatment and care. Patients engaging in treatment at Oasis Recovery Community Bradford were highly likely to achieve their detoxification treatment goals at the service. Between 1 September 2015 and 9 February 2016, 87% of patients left Oasis Recovery Community Bradford in a planned way having completed their treatment.

• All the patients we spoke to told us that the staff were caring, approachable and were always available to speak to if they needed further support. Staff were caring and respectful and their interactions were person-centred, friendly, and recovery focused. Relatives and carers were also offered support by the service, as well as in their local area.

• Oasis Recovery Community Bradford was able to admit patients within 14 days from being referred by a community substance misuse team, or from referring themselves. The service was responsive to emergency referrals from hospital or the community and could admit patients within 48 hours in these situations. Patients were seen by a doctor immediately on admission and a full assessment was completed. All patients knew how to complain. The staff we spoke to were clear about the complaints procedure. However, complaints about the service were rare. There had been one formal complaint since 1 September 2015, escalated to the senior management team that was not upheld.

• Oasis Recovery Community Bradford was well led, with local governance arrangements in place to ensure good quality care, including a range of performance indicators, policies and procedures and clinical audit. Staff understood and followed safeguarding, incident reporting, complaints and Mental Capacity Act (2005) procedures. Staff, patients, relatives and carers were able to give feedback on the planning, delivery and development of the service. The directors completed detailed quarterly quality audits, reviewing the service governance structures to ensure that treatment and care was safe, effective, and continued to improve.

However, we also found areas that the service provider could improve:

• Oasis Recovery Community Bradford did not have patient call alarms in the bedroom, or panic alarms for staff in the building in the event of an emergency or an incident of violence or aggression. There were contingency arrangements in place. However, there were no formal risk assessments completed to assess if these systems were required.

• Whilst risk management plans were in place for all patients, these were generic for each patient and lacked person-centred detail. The plans centred fully on the service delivery, rather than including the patient’s own strategies to manage the risk, which they had perhaps used prior to attending the service, or ones that they could use when they were discharged.

• The service had systems in place for the clinical staff to audit the patient records weekly. However, the service did not use a standard clinical audit tool and so could not be sure that these record audits were completed consistently to the same standard.

• Formal complaints were recorded. However, most concerns and complaints were resolved locally. These were not recorded. Therefore, recurrent themes may not be identified by the service.

• The documents for supervision, appraisal and training were not held in one central place which made it difficult to ensure the data collected was correct.