At our inspection dated 4/5 February 2013 we told the trust that it needed to make improvements to its community nursing service in the Peterborough and Cambridgeshire area. The report of this earlier inspection visit has been published. A copy of the report can be found on our website by entering the words ‘HQ The Priory’ in the appropriate search box.

At our inspection visit between 9 December 2013 and 13 December 2013 we checked what improvements had been made by the trust.

We received comments from a total of 18 patients. All of these people gave positive feedback. Patients told us staff were courteous, reliably completed planned visits and delivered good quality nursing care. A patient said, “The staff have always been conscientious in all of their dealings.” Another patient said, “The care I have received has been excellent. Staff are friendly. They always listen to my concerns and help me.”

We found that the patients whose care we reviewed had received safe and sufficient nursing care.

However, we found that the trust had failed to take appropriate steps to safeguard the health and safety and welfare of patients by ensuring a sufficient number of suitably qualified, staff were employed at all times. This was because it had not completed a reliable assessment of the number of community nursing staff it needed that was based upon an accurate assessment of how its current resources were being used to meet patients’ needs.

We also found that the systems and processes used by the trust to identify, assess, resolve and monitor risks to protect community nursing patients and staff were not robust. We found that senior managers did not have all of the information they needed to accurately check how well the community nursing service was operating in the Peterborough and Cambridgeshire area. This meant that patients could not be fully confident that the trust’s community nursing service would be able to reliably respond to their needs for safe nursing care.

As part of a themed national inspection of children who are about to use adult healthcare services we spoke with the service manager of the trust’s community nursing team and with the transition health coordinator. We asked them about the support they provided to young people aged between 14-18 years who were transitioning into adult healthcare services. We found the provider had a multi-disciplinary approach in promoting a seamless transition from children’s to adult services. We found that strong working links had been developed both within the trust, between different health disciplines such as special needs school nurses and therapists and across agencies. Our judgement in relation to this part of the trust’s provision are reported below in the section for Outcome 6. We found that children who were about to use healthcare services for adults had been safely supported through this transition.