A NEW chairman has been appointed at Southern Health NHS Trust in the wake of a "shocking" watchdog report warning it repeatedly failed to address serious concerns about patient safety.

NHS Improvement, the regulator, this evening confirmed Tim Smart would take over the role after Mike Petter resigned last night.

A spokeswoman said Mr Smart would be tasked with reviewing the leadership at Southern Health and speeding up improvements there.

The regulator is expected to make further announcements next week, the spokeswoman added, and it still could force further changes at executive level if needed.

It comes after Oxford MPs Andrew Smith and Nicola Blackwood told the Oxford Mail the public could have "no confidence" in the embattled organisation or its chief executive Katrina Percy - who tonight rejected calls to quit - after the findings.

They both called for a change in leadership after the dramatic resignations of both chairman Mr Petter and governor Mark Aspinall, triggered by a damning report published this morning by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

It was ordered by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt after the Mazars inquiry, which revealed only 272 of 722 unexpected deaths between April 2011 and March 2015 had been investigated.

The CQC criticised the trust for not doing enough to protect the vulnerable people in its care, despite concerns being raised about safety issues on three separate inspections since 2014.

This week the trust was already under fire after a leaked report appeared to suggest bosses had been made aware of "failings" a year before the death of teenager Connor Sparrowhawk. The 18-year-old drowned in a bath at the Slade House unit in Headinton after he was left alone and suffered an epileptic fit.

Today NHS Improvement, the health regulator, said the CQC's findings were "extremely disappointing" and it was considering what action to take. 

Oxford Mail:

  • Oxford East MP Andrew Smith said patient safety concerns at South Health were "a scandal".

Mr Smith called on Health Secretary Mr Hunt to further intervene, adding: "This has been a really shocking scandal. The Secretary of State has to act, and act now.

"The resignations of the chairman and the governor are effectively admissions of the board's responsibility and incompetence. 

"The public can have no confidence in the current leadership arrangements.

"I believe the whole board should go."

Miss Blackwood added: "These findings are of the most serious nature and patients and relatives will want to know not only that those responsible are being held to account but that these problems are being put right.

"It won't be enough for this to be done internally, there will need to be independent verification that this appalling situation can never happen again."

Trust chairman Mr Petter resigned yesterday before the CQC report's publication and Mr Aspinall followed suit at about 9am this morning.

In his resignation letter, Mr Aspinall said he was "disappointed by the apparent lack of drive and determination" shown by his colleagues to address concerns raised by the CQC and said "personailities" had got in the way.

He added: "We stood or were appointed because we wanted to work with the trust - to keep it honest - to deliver the best services we could for the people we serve.

"I don't believe the council has achieved anything at all in the period that I have been a member.

"I had hoped we would be able to work well together to deliver for our patients and communities but sadly, there is more drum-banging, soap-boxing and agenda pushing taking place than anything else."

Elsewhere he noted that colleagues had taken issue with the way he had apologised to "one family in particular", who were his constituents, adding: "my own humanity means I have great sympathy for them".

Oxford Mail:

  • Southern Health chief executive Katrina Percy is facing mounting calls to resign.

Speaking afterwards, Mr Aspinall called on Ms Percy to stand aside: "I like Katrina and I think she is a very competent chief executive who has become completely overwhelmed by everything that has happened.

“But I can’t help coming back to the point of view that if this were a private sector organisation the buck would stop at the top.

"I don’t see why the same shouldn’t be true of an NHS organisation.”

But last night Ms Percy told the Southern Daily Echo: "I want to reassure our patients, their families and carers that I am absolutely focused on addressing the CQC’s concerns and supporting our staff to provide the best care possible.

“We fully accept that until we address all these concerns and our new reporting and investigating procedures introduced in December 2015 are completely effective, we will remain, rightly, under intense scrutiny.

"We will continue to share regular updates on progress publicly to demonstrate improvement and help re-build trust in our services... my job is to make sure these improvements are now carried through consistently across all our services.”

Southern Health offers specialist mental health and learning disability services for people across the south of England, including Oxfordshire.

Oxford Mail:

But it has faced repeated criticism after the death of Connor Sparrowhawk, above, an Oxford 18-year-old.

It is not known if Connor's family are the group being referred to by Mr Aspinall in his resignation letter.

After the resignations, Dr Sarah Ryan, Connor's mother, called for the rest of the board to follow.

She said: “I’m surprised about Mike Petter, but very pleased. Mark Aspinall has been very honourable in his resignation and I thought his reasons were sound.

“Hopefully other people will follow suit. You have to look into yourself after a situation like this.

“The fact that they haven’t got rid of them is absolutely scandalous.

“We are continually baffled as to why NHS Improvement has not taken any action yet after the CQC findings."

A website tracking whether beleaguered trust chief executive Katrina Percy has stood down has also been created.

Mr Petter, who has been involved with the trust since it was formed in 2011, said yesterday he had chosen to leave his position following a "significant amount of scrutiny" in recent months.

Last December the infamous Mazars report, an independent review for NHS England, found that of 722 unexpected deaths of people in contact with Southern Health only a minority had ever been investigated.

Today's report from the CQC said "opportunities had been missed" to learn from patient deaths in the past and "effective arrangements had not been put in place" responding to patient safety concerns, including "ligature risks" - places people could hang themselves - and the fact that at one location multiple patients had fallen off the roof.

Inspectors also noted "serious concerns" about the safety of patients in some of the locations inspected and were critical of a "lack of action". They said bosses on the trust's board of directors had shown "little evidence" of proactively addressing the issues before the watchdog raised them.

Dr Paul Lelliott, CQC deputy chief inspector of hospitals and lead for mental health, said: "In spite of the best efforts of the staff, the key risks and actions to address them were not driving the senior leadership or board agenda. It is clear that the trust had still missed opportunities to learn from adverse incidents and to take action to reduce the chance of similar events happening in the future. 

“We were also very concerned about the lack of action taken to address risk to people posed by the physical environment in which they were being cared for.  

“The leadership of this trust shows little evidence of being proactive in identifying risk to the people it cares for or of taking action to address that risk before concerns are raised by external bodies.

"Along with partners including NHS Improvement and NHS England, we will be monitoring progress extremely closely. We will be looking not only for evidence of improvements, but for evidence that this Board is actively planning to protect patients in their care from the risk of harm.” 

Oxford Mail:

In an official resignation statement yesterday before the report was published, Southern Health chairman Mike Petter, above, said: "The Trust has recently undergone a significant amount of scrutiny in some service areas and given the challenges it faces I feel it is appropriate for me to allow new Board leadership to take forward the improvements.

"It is with great sadness that I leave the organisation. I offer my support and best wishes to all our staff whose dedication and commitment I am continuously impressed by.”

A statement today from Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust read: "In December 2015 we introduced improved processes for investigating deaths in the trust, and the CQC found these to be promising, although at the time of the visit it was felt they would require more time to embed properly. 

"A large amount of work has already taken place to ensure patient safety and quality care is delivered at every opportunity, and improvements will continue to be made. In the last two years millions has been spent on work to remove ligature risks across our sites. There are actions that can be completed relatively quickly, and some which are much longer projects which involve detailed planning."

It added: "There are no plans for Katrina Percy to resign."