Quality and safety

Our Quality Strategy works across the four Places and has been developed with those place-based teams and combined into one plan. 

The strategy sets out our key clinical quality priorities and the benefits of working as a single strategic commissioner in supporting an ageing and ethnically diverse population.

Quality is everyone’s business and the NHS Black Country ICB is committed to working with partners across the system to ensure the best possible outcomes and experience for all our patients, their families and carers. The ICB is committed to openness and transparency when developing and assuring services and seeks to hear the voice of the local population and the impact of its decisions on people. 

Our key clinical quality priorities and the benefits of working as a single strategic commissioner in supporting an ageing and ethnically diverse population are to ensure that services are delivered: 

• in the right way (delivered by a workforce that is highly skilled, motivated and competent to deliver the care required)
• at the right time (through accessible services) 
• in the right place (providing treatment/services locally in a safe and non-threatening environment) 
• with the right outcome (improving health, reducing variation in clinical outcomes, ensuring parity of esteem, reduction in potential years lost to conditions amendable to treatment).
   

NHS England and NHS Improvement published Host Commissioner guidance in January 2021. This describes a clear expectation that as the local ICB we ensure that we have assurances and maintain effective quality surveillance of all independent hospitals within our geographical boundaries.  There are six Independent Hospitals in the Black Country supporting people with a diagnosis of a mental health condition or a diagnosis of a learning disability and/or autism. The hospitals are caring for people who have been placed by different Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). Whilst the Host Commissioner guidance relates specifically to the quality of care for people with a diagnosis of a Learning Disability and/or Autism at Black Country ICB, we have decided to extend elements of the oversight described by NHS England to all people placed with Mental Health illness, Learning Disability and/or Autism.

You can contact us via our Host Commissioner inbox – bcicb.hosticb@nhs.net

At Black Country ICB, our role as Host Commissioner is to:

• Work closely with colleagues in Contracts and Quality to maintain quality surveillance of our local Independent Hospitals.
• Be the point of contact for all placing ICBs and the CQC in relation to quality assurance queries.
• Collate intelligence and triangulate information to address any quality or safety issues.
• To share and request intelligence across commissioners placing people in our area. 
• Work closely with providers to develop action that will deliver quality improvement.

The role of ICBs placing in the Black Country geographical footprint is to:

• Talk to us prior to admitting a person into the area.
• Retain commissioning oversight for the clinical care of people you place in our area, including discharge planning and ensure your contingency plans are robust.
• Undertake regular commissioning reviews, including new commissioning visits.
• Quality Surveillance - Talk to us about any quality or governance concerns you identify within the Independent Hospitals.
• Participate in assurance meetings across ICBs - The purpose of these is to share information and work together to support Independent Hospitals to maintain quality, mitigate risk and resolve concerns.    

Black Country ICB has a well-established oversight for Independent Hospitals in our area and this includes:

• Ongoing and supportive contact with providers to seek assurance about the quality of care delivered.
• Scheduled yearly and responsive quality visits.
• Triangulating intelligence from other sources such as stakeholders, 6/8-week checks, Care and Treatment Reviews, CQC inspections etc.
• The application of a formal and collaborative assurance process.
• Reporting safeguarding concerns.

Safeguarding

We work very closely with our Local Authority Safeguarding Leads to share intelligence about any allegations of abuse or neglect. Should you have any safeguarding concerns or wish to make a safeguarding referral it will be your responsibility as the placing ICB to contact the Local Authority.  Black Country safeguarding teams will also contact you directly should a local safeguarding concern be raised that involves the person you have placed in our area.

For any safeguarding concerns about an independent hospital in Wolverhampton please contact:

• 01902 551199 (Monday to Thursday 9am – 5pm and Friday 9am – 4.30pm)
• 01902 552999 (out of hours)
• Complete a Wolverhampton Adult Safeguarding Referral Form

For any safeguarding concerns about an independent hospital in Walsall please contact:

• 0300 555 2922
• Complete a Walsall Adult Safeguarding Concern Form

For any safeguarding concerns about an independent hospital in Dudley please contact:

• 0300 555 0055 (Monday – Friday 9am – 5pm and select option 1)
• 0300 555 8574 (out of hours)
• Complete a Dudley Adult Safeguarding Concern Form

For any safeguarding concerns about an independent hospital in Sandwell please contact:

• 0121 569 2266 (Monday to Thursday 9am – 5.30pm and Friday (am – 5pm)
• 0121 569 2355 (out of hours)
• Complete a Sandwell Adult Safeguarding Concern Form

Talk to us

If you intend to admit a person, please contact us in advance and we will be able to advise you of any current safety or quality concerns. When contacting us please do not include person identifiable information in your emails. As Host ICB we will never ask for identifiable information about people you place in our area.

Please contact us via our Host Commissioner inbox – bcicb.hosticb@nhs.net

How to tell us about a concern:

• Please contact us via our Host Commissioner inbox – bcicb.hosticb@nhs.net

Black Country Independent Hospital locations

We buy services from all the main NHS Trusts in the area:

• Black Country Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
• The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust
• The Dudley Integrated Health and Care Trust
• The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust 
• Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust 
• Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust
• West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust

Alongside local services and over 300 care homes. All CQC ratings for the above can be found on the Care Quality Commission website.

Quality is at the heart of everything we do. The Care Home Quality Nurse Advisor (QNA) Team lead the quality and safety agenda in care homes across the Black Country. The QNA Team delivers the Integrated Care Home Improvement Plan working closely with the Quality and Transformation Teams to establish systems and processes for effective quality assurance monitoring. The team drives innovation, transformation and improvement across the Ageing Well portfolio targeted on the older person, with key work streams focusing on improving quality and safety in care homes to protect vulnerable residents, implementation of remote monitoring at home and improving the accessibility to the right place of care at the right time linked with individual’s preference to chosen place of care.

The Team also works to imbed the FREED pathway (Frailty, Recognising End of Life and Escalating Deterioration) into all care homes, and support other programmes and portfolios, including:

• Living well 
• Staying safe 
• The Urgent Integrated Care agenda
• Prevention.

The QNA team undertakes annual training needs analysis and develops effective care home education programmes supporting the introduction of clinical guidelines and quality indicators, ensuring homes participate in the NHS Institution’s Harm Free Care Programme.

The ICB has a Care Homes App to support staff and families. The app includes lots helpful resources, recent guidance, latest news and training. To download this app please first download Healthzone UK and Search for “Black Country Care Homes App”.
 

Children and young people come into care (CYPiC) following often traumatic experiences including abuse or neglect, as unaccompanied asylum seekers, or due to the loss of main carers through illness, death or imprisonment, which make them more vulnerable to:

• emotional and mental health issues, including attachment difficulties
• early pregnancy
• physical health and developmental delay
• exploitation
• disengaging from education.

Recognising the above, designated CYPiC professionals across the Black Country aim to ensure the care delivered to our children is high quality, responsive, high performing and provides value for money. Channels of communication between commissioners and provider organisations must be effective to ensure the health needs of CYPiC are met in a timely way.

• High Quality: A child-centred service delivered in a safe environment in a timely fashion and in a manner that takes account of the views of the child/young person and is delivered by staff who are in receipt of appropriate training, supervision and support.
• Responsive: The service must provide flexibility to respond to the changing needs of local CYPiC and to take account of corporate plans and actions to reduce the numbers of children entering the care system.
• High performing: Having systems and processes that focus on meeting each child’s physical, emotional and mental health needs without making them feel different, ensuring access to universal services as well as targeted and specialist services where necessary. Information must be provided as specified in relation to activity, finance and quality of service provision.
• Provides value for money, quality assurance: This means children and young people receive the right care in the right place at the right time, and that specialist support is high quality and monitored to ensure progress is being made.

The CCG continues to progress a programme of safeguarding training for staff to ensure that all eligible staff have received the right level of CYPiC training relevant to their roles and responsibilities as per the revised national intercollegiate guidance (2020).
 

Concerns about a child or adult

If you’re concerned about the welfare of an adult or child in the Black Country, please make a referral via the links below.

If you believe someone is in immediate danger of harm, dial 999.

For further information on key safeguarding topics, local policies procedures, and training please refer to the Local Safeguarding Partnerships:

• Dudley Local Safeguarding Partnerships​​​​​​, go to https://safeguarding.dudley.gov.uk/
• Sandwell Local Safeguarding Partnerships​​​​​​, go to https://www.sandwellcsp.org.uk/
• Walsall Local Safeguarding Partnerships​​​​​, go to https://walsallsp.org.uk/
• Wolverhampton Local Safeguarding Partnerships​​​​​​, go to https://www.wolverhamptonsafeguarding.org.uk/

The ICB’s role in safeguarding children and adults

• Ensuring that the organisations that we commission to provide health and care services maintain procedures to ensure the safety of people at risk of abuse and neglect.
• Ensuring that processes are in place that enable us to learn lessons from cases where adults and children die or are seriously harmed, and abuse and neglect was already known or suspected.
• Ensuring that there are effective arrangements in place for information sharing on safeguarding.
• Procuring the expertise of designated clinical experts with the authority to influence local thinking and practice in the health and care system, in relation to safeguarding.
• To provide designated professionals for safeguarding adults, safeguarding children and safeguarding looked-after children (children in care).

Contact us

To contact the safeguarding team at the ICB please email blackcountrysafeguarding@nhs.net or call 0300 0120 281.

The death of a child is a devastating loss that profoundly affects bereaved parents as well as siblings, grandparents, extended family, friends and professionals who were involved in caring for the child in any capacity. Families experiencing such a tragedy should be met with empathy, compassion and clear, sensitive communication. Families need to understand what happened to their child and know that people will learn from what happened. The process of expertly reviewing all children’s deaths is grounded in deep respect for the rights of children and their families, with the intention of preventing future child deaths.

To notify us of a child's death within the Black Country, please click here: www.ecdop.co.uk/BlackCountry/Live

To contact the Black Country Child Death Overview Panel, please email bcicb.blackcountrycdop@nhs.net 

To find out more about the Child Death Overview Panel, please visit the Black Country ICS website here.

Annual Report

The Child Death Overview Panel publishes an annual report which provides an overview of local patterns and trends. Learning lessons from Child Death cases is a priority, and will have a positive impact on the safety, health and wellbeing of children and young people, and to ensure the learning is shared widely across the area, as well as regionally and nationally. The annual report is supported by NCMD data which is released in the November of the following year reported.

The annual report explores the statistical and qualitative conclusions for that year from the Child Death Overview Panel Reviews in the Black Country.

Child Death Overview Panel Annual Report 2021-2022

This report explores the statistical and qualitative conclusions from the Child Death Overview Panel Reviews in the Black Country during the reporting year April 2021 to March 2022.

The Patient Safety, Incident & Learning Team are responsible for liaising with all health care providers commissioned by the ICB to ensure patient safety incidents, never events and quality matters are reported, collated and triangulated with other key information. Through analysis of data, the team will work to identify themes and trends that can be actioned to ensure the safe delivery of high-quality care across the system.

The team will support and promote the organisational patient safety culture focussing on high-quality care and standards, preventing avoidable harm by analysing and interpreting trends, themes, lessons learnt and sharing best practice.

Patient Safety and Incident Learning is a key part of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy, to deliver safety and quality improvements across the NHS in England. The team will support programmes of work in relation to Patient Safety, Incidents and Learning and work collaboratively across the system to support continuous and sustainable improvement through:

• Culture: Promote positive safety culture, encouraging staff to gain insight and share learning from good and poor practice
• Evidence-based improvement: Support evidence-based, quality improvement (QI) methodology, ensuring change is consistently measured and evaluated
• Quality improvement (QI) capability: Grow QI capability in trusts and local healthcare systems so they can continue to improve
• System-level change: Enable regional and local health systems to identify improvement priorities and share learning. The Team can be reached by emailing bcwbccg.incidents@nhs.net.

If you have a comment, complaint or question about Quality and Safety, or about an experience you’ve had, please contact our Time2Talk customer service team.