Staff at Staffordshire treatment and recovery service treat people with 'compassion and kindness', watchdog says

The Staffordshire Treatment and Recovery Service, which has a site in Stafford and elsewhere, was hailed by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) after an inspection.

The service, which provides free and confidential support to more than 3,450 adults each year, was rated "Good" across the board following the checks in March.

Inspectors said: "The service provided safe care. All premises where clients received care were safe, clean, well equipped, well furnished, well maintained and fit for purpose.

"Staff treated clients with compassion and kindness and understood the individual needs of clients. Clients that we spoke to were happy with their treatment and they felt they were actively involved in their recovery."

They found staff followed "good practice" with respect to safeguarding and provided a range of treatments suitable for the needs of clients. The service, which has sites in Newcastle under Lyme, Burton, Leek and Tamworth, was operating out of hours telephone and virtual appointments to reduce waiting times.

But they also found, however, that: care records were "brief and lacked detail and goals particularly around recovery planning".

Emily Todd, regional director at Humankind which runs the service, said: "I am proud of the results of the recent CQC inspection in Staffordshire. It is the result of the hard work of the staff and management teams, who are passionate about improving the lives of the people we work with.

"Implementing a large new integrated treatment system at the height of the pandemic brought challenges, but the teams showed resilience to work through them, and this Good result across all five areas is the result of that commitment."

Staffordshire Treatment and Recovery Service (STARS) is commissioned by Staffordshire County Council and has been run by the charity Humankind since 2020. The inspection was the first one conducted at the service by CQC.