Children & Young People's Community Health Services

Updated 6 July 2021

The Children and Young People’s Community Health Service (CYPCHS) sits under the umbrella organisation of Suffolk County Council (SCC) and is part of the larger Children and Young Peoples Directorate. The CYPCHS provides community health care services to children and young people aged 0-19, and up to age 25 for Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND). The service includes community health, learning improvement, inclusion services for children with SEND and children’s social care. CQC do not regulate education and therefore we did not look at the educational services this during this inspection. We did inspect the range of health services for children and young people aged 0-19 years, and their families. The service headquarters is at Endeavour House in Ipswich, Suffolk (the service was previously registered as Endeavour House but changed its name in 2020 to Children and Young People’s Community Health Services to be more representative of services provided). Services are available to all children, young people and their families living in the county of Suffolk, or who attend school in Suffolk, apart from the Lowestoft and Waveney area where services are commissioned and provided separately by other organisations.

The community based healthcare services includes health visiting, school nursing, special school nursing, named nursing for safeguarding children, children in care nursing, community children’s learning disability nursing, enuresis (bed wetting) and family nurse partnership services. These services are delivered from a range of community settings including health centres, children’s centres, schools and families’ homes.

The service first registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in March 2011 to provide the following regulated activities:

• Nursing care
• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury
• Diagnostic or screening procedures was added in 2020

There is a Registered Manager for the service who has been in post since November 2014.

The last inspection was a focused inspection completed in 2018 to follow up on concerns identified when we inspected in 2017. At that inspection we issued a requirement notice to the provider for failing to provide us with evidence of compliance to Regulation 17 (1)(2)(a)(b). This was because systems and processes were not established nor operated effectively to ensure compliance with the requirements of this regulation. Pre-employment records were not kept up to date and not all staff could clinical policies. At the 2018 inspection we found the service was compliant with Regulation 17 and there were no further areas for improvement. The service has not previously been rated.

Updated 6 July 2021

We rated this service as good because:

The service had enough staff to care for patients and keep them safe. Staff had training in key skills, understood how to protect patients from abuse, and managed safety well. The service controlled infection risk well. Staff assessed risks to patients, acted on them and kept good care records. The service managed safety incidents well and learned lessons from them. Staff collected safety information and used it to improve the service.

Staff provided good care and advice. Managers monitored the effectiveness of the service and made sure staff were competent. Staff worked well together for the benefit of patients, advised them on how to lead healthier lives, supported them to make decisions about their care, and had access to good information.

Staff treated children, young people and their families with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, took account of their individual needs, and helped them understand their conditions. They provided emotional support to children, young people and their families.

The service planned care to meet the needs of local people, took account of children, young people and their families’ individual needs, and made it easy for people to give feedback. People could access the service when they needed it and did not have to wait too long for assessment and advice/referral.

Leaders ran services well using reliable information systems and supported staff to develop their skills. Staff understood the providers values and priorities, and how to apply them in their work. Staff generally felt respected, supported and valued. They were focused on the needs of children and young people receiving care. Staff were clear about their roles and accountabilities. The service engaged well with children, young people and their families and the community to plan and manage services and all staff were committed to improving services continually.

However;

The recent staff survey identified specific pockets of dissatisfied teams and/or roles.

We were not assured that the process to risk assess staffs' 'fitness to practice' in the absence of performing regular Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks following initial DBS check on joining the service was robust.

We were not assured that action to reduce documentation incidents was effective.

We were not assured that communication with external agencies was always timely.

Informal complaints were not reviewed in a manner which allowed oversight.

Updated 6 July 2021

See overall summary.