Priory Wellbeing Centre - Manchester

Updated 27 October 2022

The Priory Wellbeing Centre Manchester provides community-based outpatient mental health services for adults and children and young people. It provides outpatient therapy and treatment for a wide range of mental health conditions. This includes one-to-one or group-based therapy that individuals can attend on a session-by-session basis. The centre also works in partnership with Priory Hospital Altrincham to provide access to more specialist or intensive mental health services if required. Counselling and therapy is delivered to help individuals overcome their mental health challenges and improve the quality of their personal and professional life.

The centre also provides young people’s services for individuals under 18 who need support for their mental health.

It provides personalised treatment packages, which are individually tailored according to need. Patients can pay for their own treatment or be funded by their health insurance.

The team consists of psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists. They offer personalised treatment packages for individuals, providing psychiatry services, psychotherapy and psychology.

The service is registered to provide the regulated activity treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

There is no registered manager but the current manager is applying to become the registered manager and they had only been in post for a month at the time of inspection.

The service has not had an inspection before.

We have reported our findings on service for adults in the section headed Community-based mental health services for adults of working age. Our findings on services for children and young people are in the section headed Community-based mental health services for children. Where our findings on services for children and young people – for example, about management arrangements – are the same as those for the adults’ service we do not repeat the information but refer readers to the adults’ service section.

What people who use the service say

We spoke to six patients and four carers. All spoke positively about the consultant psychiatrists, the administrators and therapy teams. Patients and carers felt fully involved in their care and treatment. They were able to contact the service if they had any issues to discuss. Patients said their mental health had improved as a result of receiving care and treatment from the service.

Updated 27 October 2022

We rated this location as good because:

• The service provided mostly safe care and patients had recovery-oriented treatment plans informed by an assessment and in collaboration with families and carers. They provided a range of treatments that were informed by best practice guidance and suitable to the needs of the patients. The teams included or had access to a full range of specialists required to meet the needs of the patients.
• Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness. The service was easy to access, and staff assessed and treated patients who required urgent care promptly. The service was well led, and the governance processes ensured that that procedures relating to the work of the service ran smoothly.

However:

• We found when prescribing medications to adult patients diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), visiting consultants who were prescribing did not always complete physical health checks. This was not in line with Good Practice Guide for Consultants with Practicing Privileges at Priory and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance on prescribing medication for ADHD.

Updated 27 October 2022

We rated this service as good because:

• The service provided safe care. Clinical premises where children and young people were seen were safe and clean. The number of children and young people on the caseload of the teams, and of individual members of staff, was not too high to prevent staff from giving each person the time they needed. Staff managed waiting lists well to ensure that children and young people who required urgent care were seen promptly. 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 and in collaboration with families and carers. They provided a range of treatments that were informed by best-practice guidance and suitable to the needs of children and young people. Staff engaged in clinical audits 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 multidisciplinary team and with relevant services outside the organisation.
• Staff understood their roles and responsibilities under the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
• Staff treated children and young people with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, and understood the individual needs of people. They actively involved children, young people and families and carers in care decisions.
• The service was easy to access. Staff assessed and treated children and young people who required urgent care promptly and those who did not require urgent care did not wait too long to start treatment. The criteria for referral to the service did not exclude children and young people who would have benefitted from care.
• The service was well led and the governance processes ensured that that procedures relating to the work of the service ran smoothly.

Community based mental health services for children core service is a small proportion of the wellbeing centre’s activity. The main service was Community-based services for adults of working age. Where arrangements were the same, we have reported findings in the Community-based services for adults of working age section.

We rated this service as good because it was safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led.

Updated 27 October 2022

We rated the service as good because:

• The service provided safe care. Clinical premises where patients were seen were safe and clean. The number of patients on the caseload of the teams, and of individual members of staff, was not too high to prevent staff from giving each patient the time they needed. Staff managed waiting lists well to ensure that patients who required urgent care were seen promptly. Staff followed good practice with respect to safeguarding.
• Staff developed, recovery-oriented treatment plans informed by an assessment and in collaboration with families and carers. They provided a range of treatments that were informed by best-practice guidance and suitable to the needs of the patients. Staff engaged in clinical audits to evaluate the quality of care they provided. Psychological therapies included, cognitive behavioural therapy, cognitive analytic therapy, counselling, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, guided self-help, dialectical behavioural therapy, and group sessions.
• 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 multidisciplinary team and with relevant services outside the organisation.
• Staff understood their roles and responsibilities under the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
• Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, 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 patients who required urgent care promptly and those who did not require urgent care did not wait too long to start treatment. The criteria for referral to the service did not exclude patients 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.

However:

• We found when prescribing medication to adult patients diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Visiting consultants who were prescribing did not always complete physical health checks as per the Priory’s policy on monitoring patient’s physical health (inpatients 2022) and the good practice guide for consultants with practicing privileges. This was not in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance on prescribing medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
• We reviewed eleven patient records, in which we found inconsistencies in the assessment of risk. Five records completed by the visiting consultants had recorded patient risk as low or medium. There was no detail or formal risk assessments used as to how the visiting consultants had come to a level of risk.