Safe care, every day: The changes underway at St Andrew’s
By Dr Vivienne McVey, CEO of St Andrew’s Healthcare
St Andrew’s Healthcare provides specialist care for people with complex mental health needs.
Every day, staff across our hospitals dedicate themselves to supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our society. And every day, we see signs of hope as our patients take steps towards living better, more fulfilling lives.
But we haven’t always got this right.
We have not delivered a consistently high standard of care for all patients at our Northampton hospital, and we are sorry.
As a charity, we are committed to transparency and take a zero‑tolerance approach to any allegation of harm or poor practice. When standards have fallen short, we have reported ourselves to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and referred allegations of poor care to the police, which is currently reviewing cases from 2024 and last year.
Urgent action
Accepting where we have fallen short is important, but it is not enough. These issues demand decisive action, and we are making the changes needed to put things right.
We are taking action on three levels:
1. Immediate changes on every ward
We are rolling out a programme called Safe Today across all our wards. This delivers day‑to‑day improvements to how care is planned, organised and delivered for every patient.
2. Fundamental improvements to how care is delivered
We have already made major changes, including:
- New training for all frontline staff
- Reducing agency staffing to near zero
- Increasing nursing levels per patient
- Installing CCTV on most wards, with routine reviews and spot checks
- Strengthening leadership in nursing and clinical services
- Building an open culture where staff feel safe to speak up
- Removing management layers to bring leaders closer to ward teams
3. Sharper focus on areas of greatest need
We have doubled down on the services where patient need and demand is highest. This has required difficult decisions to close some services, but it ensures our full resources are focused on improving care for those who rely on us most.
Progress
We are making these changes at pace – and we are already seeing signs of progress: more staff say they feel confident raising concerns; serious incidents have fallen significantly; and patients are telling us they are starting to feel the difference.
The CQC will soon publish its report following its October inspection of our Northampton hospital. While we hope it will recognise some progress, we also expect it will also highlight that we still have some way to go.
We accept this, and we are not in denial about the scale of change required. We know we have fallen short in the past, and we are determined to put things right. Our focus is on urgent, sustained improvements to deliver the consistently high quality care that our patients deserve.
