Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (OBMH) has received a rating of ‘good’ for its use of resources and ‘good’ for the quality of services in the latest Annual Health Check which covers the period 2007/08, before the Trust became a Foundation Trust.

Julie Waldron, Chief Executive, said “Our latest rating is a real indication of how our staff have continued to work hard to improve and develop services for people in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. We were disappointed to narrowly miss out on being rated as ‘excellent’ for our quality of services as we did not meet all of the core standards until October 2007. However, we are confident that these achievements will be recognised in our rating next year”.

OBMH met all new and existing targets but did not meet five of the 43 core targets until later in the year.

Julie continues, “As soon as we identified areas where improvements were needed the Trust put action plans in place to ensure these were met as soon as possible”.

These improvements were:
• Increased training for staff on child protection
• Mandatory training introduced as part of staff induction and online mandatory training developed to ensure improved access for staff
• A clear statement of reassurance for patients that they will not be discriminated against if they make a complaint
• Clear information for patients and service users about our services
• Increased training for staff on infection control and the appointment of infection control nurses within the Trust.

OBMH continued to manage its finances well and successfully met all financial targets.

Julie adds, “We look forward to the year ahead continuing to work with staff, service users, carers and our Foundation Trust (FT) members to develop services for people in the local area. We encourage people to join our FT by visiting www.obmh.nhs.uk “.

OBMH was also successfully reassessed for the NHS Litigation Authority Risk Management Standards at level 1 over the 13th and 14th October. These new standards replaced the old Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (CNST) standards and have involved a lot of work across the Trust’s departments. The assessor was very complimentary about the quality of the evidence that was presented and the very positive attitude of the staff who were interviewed during the assessment process.