St George's Hospital - Children & Families Care Group

Updated 24 March 2020

HMP Hewell is a closed category B adult male local prison, located in a rural part of Worcestershire. There was also a small category D open prison unit, Hewell Grange, currently holding only 50 men, though this was scheduled to close in March 2020. Until January 2020 the prison had been receiving prisoners from courts in the West Midlands, which had increased the turnover of remand and newly sentenced prisoners. During our visit HMP Hewell was holding 900 male prisoners.

Health services at HMP Hewell are commissioned by NHS England. The main healthcare contractor sub-contracts mental health and psychosocial substance misuse service provision to MPFT. MPFT is registered with CQC to provide the regulated activities of Diagnostic and screening procedures, and Treatment of disease, disorder or injury at the relevant location.

The report on the June 2019 focused inspection can be found on our website at:

https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/inspections/hmp-hewell-3/

This inspection report covers our findings in relation to those aspects detailed in the Requirement Notice issued to MPFT in September 2019.

Updated 24 March 2020

We carried out an announced focused inspection of mental health and psychosocial substance misuse services provided by Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (MPFT) at HMP Hewell on 4 February 2020. The outreach services are registered at the location St George’s Hospital – Specialist. We last inspected the service in June 2019 when we judged that MPFT was in breach of CQC regulations. We issued a Requirement Notice on 25 September 2019 in relation to Regulation 18, Staffing, of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

The purpose of this inspection was to determine if the healthcare services provided by MPFT were now meeting the legal requirements and regulations under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008. We found that improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of the regulations.

We do not currently rate services provided in prisons.

At this inspection we found:

• Staff now had access to the mandatory training system and most had completed relevant mandatory training.
• Staff were now supported through regular supervision.
• Several staff vacancies had been filled with three new staff currently undergoing vetting.
• The provider was working effectively with health, prison and community partners to continue to improve patient care.