Strategy
St Andrew's Healthcare is a registered charity that was founded in 1838 with a hospital in Northampton to provide humane care to the mentally ill. The charity is still headquartered in Northampton, but also now has locations in Nottinghamshire, Essex and Birmingham. It is one of the leading organisations that provides in-patient care for people with mental health issues referred by the NHS and employs more than 4,000 people.
It provides care across a number of services, including Men’s Mental Health, Women’s Mental Health, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), Neuropsychiatry, Autistic Spectrum Disorder and Learning Disability, with the majority (more than 90%) of our 600 patients referred to the charity via the NHS.
Recent years have seen the charity receive a number of highly critical reports from the CQC following inspections (see Issues section).
Financials
St Andrew's Healthcare is registered charity number 1104951. For the financial year ending 31 March 2023 the charity had gross income of £195.3 million, up from £181.0 million in 2022 and expenditure of £199.73 million in 2023, up from £193.7 million. Income from government contracts in 2023 amounted to £164.65 million, up from £152.97 million in 2022.
Contracts
St Andrew's Healthcare receives over 90% of its patients via referral from the NHS.
Concerns
Safety and care concerns
The CQC has issued a number of very critical reports on the organisation, its management, staff, governance, and safety and quality of care over recent years.
In November 2021, the CQC criticised the charity’s adult ward in a hospital in Northampton, where it was claimed staff fell asleep during work. The CQC has described the facility as unsafe and restricted admissions. The provider is now banned from admitting new patients to its female-only forensic and rehabilitation units, plus all of its learning disability wards, without the CQC’s permission. Inspectors visited in July and August and expressed concerns about staffing levels, patient observations, and workforce culture.
In June 2019, its Northampton hospital was rated “inadequate” by the CQC. The watchdog had found that adolescents were kept in unsafe seclusion rooms for excessive amounts of time and without beds, blankets or pillows. It was reported that some patients had been in seclusion for years and earlier in 2019 the Victoria Derbyshire programme was given footage of a teenager reaching their arm through a door hatch to enable contact with their parents during a visit to the hospital.
In January 2020, the CQC published a highly critical report on St Andrew’s Healthcare and rated the organisation “requires improvement”. The report contained a number of concerns, including that in previous inspections records had been falsified for the CQC thus covering up allegations of poor care and abusive behaviour.
Inspectors have highlighted a series of failings at an independent provider, including treatment of a patient and children being dragged across the floor. In February 2020, the organisation’s adolescent mental health unit in Northampton was rated “inadequate” for the second time in a year, following a litany of failings found by the CQC.
The report stated: “Staff did not always use approved restraint techniques, which resulted in staff dragging patients along the floor or physically injuring patients during restraint. Senior staff told us they observed CCTV footage of these incidents and were concerned that other staff present had not acted to intervene.”
