Enter and view: Holly Ward, Redwoods Centre

Healthwatch Shropshire and Healthwatch Telford and Wrekin conducted an announced Enter and View visit to The Redwoods Centre's Holly Ward, a mental health inpatient ward for older adults, in November 2017 at the request of Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs).

The visit was arranged after the 2015 reconfiguration of the Redwoods Centre wards. This meant that all inpatient wards became mixed sex and, since this change, there have been a number of incidents and safeguarding concerns despite monitoring by South Staffordshire and Shropshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (SSSFT).

Healthwatch Shropshire and Healthwatch Telford and Wrekin designed the visit to speak to service users about how safe they felt and whether they felt supported by staff, to look at the ward and how it is arranged, and to speak to as many staff as possible about their experiences of working and supporting service users on the ward.

The ward has 16 beds, 8 male and 8 female. The Ward Manager advised that there are usually between 14 and 16 people on the ward. Male and female rooms are on separate corridors each with its own lounge. Each room has an en-suite bathroom and on each corridor one of the rooms is larger and has a bathroom with a hoist to give better access for disabled service users.

The majority of patients praised the support and communication by staff, although one hearing impaired patient expressed concern about the quality of their communication with staff.

Staff spoken to said that they felt the IT systems available on the ward were slow and that they would like to see better systems so that they had more time to spend working directly with service users.

Overall, the findings were that: service users benefited greatly from there being a strong professional staff team that worked well in a person-centred way; Service users on the whole appreciated being on the ward and had few concerns; service users spoken to felt safe and secure on the ward; none of the service users made mention of the fact the ward was mixed sex and; the Enter and view Authorised Representatives noted that the ward had a warm, caring and calm atmosphere.

The report made five recommendations which included the staff team reviewing their practice around the NHS Accessible Information Standard, and that the Trust addresses the IT issues in order to free up staff time.

The recommendations were received positively by the Ward Manager who has responded with strong actions against each recommendation, and notes that the IT issue has been raised with the trust and new equipment has been ordered for the ward.