Oxford Health’s 2019 inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has resulted in an overall rating of ‘Good’, with improvements across the majority of our services.

The CQC found that the trust has a strong patient focus, a learning culture and that staff showed caring, compassionate attitudes, were involved in development and improvements, and passionate and proud to work with us. They also found that our teams are well-led.

In summary, the report finds that since the last inspection in 2018 the trust has continued to make improvements despite facing challenging funding issues.

As well as citing the independently identified overall funding shortfall in mental health services, it notes that a review by Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group highlighted a £12m shortfall in mental health funding and a £10m shortfall in funding for community services.

The report recognises that this has required an additional level of dedication and capability from trust leaders and all staff to maintain the capacity and quality of services while managing scarce resources.

This inspection covered 16 community health and mental health and learning disability services.

The trust’s Primary Medical Services – Luther Street GP Practice for homeless people (Outstanding) and the GP Out of Hours Service (Good)  are inspected separately, and their scores do not contribute to the overall rating.

The trust’s overall rating is based on scores for 16 mental health, learning disability and community health core services.

Fourteen core services were rated as ‘Good’ overall, one was rated ‘Requires Improvement’ and one was rated ‘Outstanding’. Across the trust, most of the environments were safe, clean, well-equipped, well maintained and fit for purpose.

The report notes that the trust has made the majority of improvements they said we should make following our last inspection.

Trust chief executive Stuart Bell was delighted with the CQC rating and told staff: “This is your result, delivered by you and your colleagues across our trust.

“We know and continue to recognise that there are some areas where we need to make improvements and we are working on a plan to address those.

We will continue to work on that, with your help in the months and years to come. In the meanwhile, I would like to thank all of you for your contribution to this really good result.”

The full CQC report can be accessed at www.cqc.org.uk/provider/RNU