Archived: Aspire

Updated 7 January 2019

Aspire is an independent community mental health service based in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Its provider is Community Links Ltd. Community Links Ltd delivers both mental health and adult social care services.

Aspire works with young people and adults from 14 to 65 years old who have experienced their first episode of psychosis. This Early Intervention in Psychosis service works intensively with its patients for up to three years before they are discharged back into primary or other secondary care services. Staff at Aspire deliver care within the community and in patients’ homes, as well their office base. The service provides medical and psychosocial interventions.

The service has been commissioned to deliver early intervention services as an independent provider and covers the whole of the Leeds region. Aspire works closely with the local trust and stakeholders.

This service is currently registered to carry out the following regulated activity:

• Treatment of disorder, disease or injury.

In May 2016, we rated the service as ‘requires improvement’ overall. We issued Aspire with three requirement notices which related to regulation 12 and 17 under the Health and Social Care Act (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, and regulation 18 of the Health and Social Care Act (Registration) Regulation 2009.

However, the Care Quality Commission returned to Aspire in January 2017 for a focused inspection looking at the ‘safe’ and ‘well led’ domains to see if they had addressed the breaches in regulation from the previous inspection in May 2016. We found the service had addressed the issues we found and we re-rated Aspire as ‘good’ across all five domains and ‘good’ overall.

Updated 7 January 2019

We rated it as good because:

• The service provided safe care. Clinical premises where patients were seen were safe and clean.  Staff assessed and managed risk well and followed good practice with respect to safeguarding.

• Staff developed holistic, recovery-oriented care plans informed by a comprehensive assessment. They provided a range of treatments suitable to the needs of the patients and staff engaged in clinical audit to evaluate the quality of care they provided.

• The teams included or had access to the full range of specialists required to meet the needs of the patients. Managers ensured that these staff received training, supervision and appraisal. Staff worked well together as a multi-disciplinary team and with relevant services outside the organisation.

• Staff understood and discharged their roles and responsibilities under the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

• Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness and understood the individual needs of patients. They actively involved patients and families and carers in care decisions.

• The service was easy to access. Staff assessed and treated people who required urgent care promptly and those who did not require urgent care did not wait too long to start treatment.The service did not exclude people who would have benefitted from care.

• The service was well led and the governance processes ensured that procedures relating to the work of the service ran smoothly.

Updated 7 January 2019