| Mersey Care’s mental health team at HMP Liverpool has won an award for quality healthcare and leadership. |
| The mental health team at HMP Liverpool has marked Men’s Health Week by becoming the first within Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust to win the STEEEP-L award for achieving quality healthcare and leadership. The team, who took over providing mental health care at the prison in April 2018, received the award from Joe Rafferty, the Trust’s Chief Executive, having excelled in the seven categories – safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable, person-centred and leadership. The award, which is championed by Ruth May, the Chief Nurse of England, follows positive feedback from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons last year, who regarded them as the best mental health team across the prison system, while the Care Quality Commission (CQC) regarded the service as good to outstanding. Jonathan Drew, Service Lead at HMP Liverpool, said: “We’re absolutely delighted to be the first team in the Trust to receive this award and I regard it as recognition of all the hard work and dedication put in by the team over the last couple of years.  “I think the key to the success of the team has been the effective partnerships, working interactively across the sectors and forming strong robust professional relationships. We’ve worked well alongside Spectrum Community Healthcare CIC, who provide primary care/substance misuse services in the prison, Change Grow Live, who provide non clinical psychosocial recovery services, and prison staff to provide a co-ordinated approach.” Among the initiatives introduced by the team to help improve the mental health provision at the prison were: – A clearly defined target operating model – The whole service has embraced daily safety huddles, developed training needs analyses, rolled out leadership courses and shifted the culture to that of one of reflection and learning – Introducing one of the few Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) pathways in the prison service – We’ve also achieved our ambition to engage students in the service and our risk management structure has been recognised by CQC as one of the most robust and innovative pieces of work across the country – Staff are being recognised for their contributions to the service and healthcare staff have commented about how fantastic it is to nurse again and are proud to work at HMP Liverpool. Mr Rafferty said: “This award is recognition of an outstanding job that has made a real difference to prisoner mental health care and a great example of how partnership working can achieve real results. “For any health care provider to be successful within a prison setting, it’s crucial to build a positive relationship with prison management and that’s been done superbly. It was a challenging time when the team first took over two years ago and they’ve turned it around into one of the best performing services within Mersey Care.” |
Living Well Sefton 