Investigation into two serious sexual safety incidents at Cambs NHS Trust

A Cambridgeshire NHS Trust has said investigations are taking place after two serious sexual safety incidents happened in June.

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust has said it is working with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the Integrated Care Board to investigate what happened.

The incidents reportedly took place shortly after the Trust had reduced its own risk rating for ensuring sexual safety.

The Trust’s chief executive, Anna Mills, said it was “fair to challenge” whether this risk rating was reduced “prematurely”.

A report presented at the Trust’s board of directors meeting this week (July 26), said the two sexual safety serious incidents happened in June under the adult and specialist mental health directorate.

The report said: “At the appropriate juncture, the Trust will fully investigate the two sexual safety serious incidents to identify and apply learning.

“In order to apply immediate learning, the Trust has reconvened a weekly CQC assurance meeting focused on sexual safety areas for improvement.

“In addition to staff training, directorates are working in collaboration to identify clinicians’ practice development needs to ensure that sexual safety is actively considered in the assessment, risk assessment and care planning of all relevant inpatients.

“Improvements to staff guidance and policies have been identified and are in the process of being ratified and implemented in practice.”

The report also said there were 31 sexual safety incidents across the Trust in June, compared to 17 in May and 34 in April.

The Trust said its data showed around 50 per cent of the June incidents were “described as no harm”.

The meeting heard that the risk level for ‘ensuring sexual safety and reporting of sexual safety incidents’ had been reduced after new training and policies were introduced.

Penny Snowden, the director of nursing, allied health professionals and quality, said the risk was reduced before the incidents had occurred.

She explained she had been leading a quality improvement programme and that a new sexual safety policy had been developed and signed off by the Trust.

Ms Snowden said there had been training and “quite a lot of improvements to people’s knowledge”, and that because of “all the improvement work” the risk level had been reduced.

Ms Snowden said lessons had been learnt from this about reducing the risk levels.

Ms Hills said there was learning for the Trust around making sure it could demonstrate measures it put in place were embedded.

She said: “It is a fair challenge to say did we reduce that risk prematurely when we were not certain those changes had been embedded.”

Eileen Milner, the Trust’s interim chair, said there was “much to do here” and said the Trust would report on what it was doing “transparently”.