Quality and safety

Listening to what people say about their experience of our services is an important part of our quality and safety work.

We adopt a learning and improvement approach to all our work and are always open to learning from other organisations, new national guidance and from incidents that occur in our organisation.

Quality and safety underpin our work and are shaped around our seven quality and safety programmes:

  • Safe, high quality information
  • Restorative, just and learning culture
  • Safe from suicide
  • Safe from unnecessary restriction
  • Safe and effective use of medication
  • Sexual safety
  • Safe physical healthcare

We deliver these programmes through continuous learning and improvement, informed by the experiences and feedback from people who use our services, their families and carers, supporters and professionals.

Our learning from patient experience and how we engage with 'experts by experience' is led by our overarching Together approach. People with lived experience of mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity conditions - and their families and carers - are also essential to a variety of work streams across our organisation. We have embedded co-production into many areas of our work, including our Together Strategy and our Carers Strategy.

Safeguarding

Safeguarding is everyone's responsibility.

Everybody has the right to live their life free from violence, fear and abuse; to be respected by other people and the right to live in safety.

Abuse can be a single act or continue over months or even years.  Abuse can happen regardless of age.

Concerned about an adult

If you see, hear or suspect that an adult may be at risk of abuse or neglect, you must tell someone:

Concerned about child

If you are worried or concerned about a child being at risk of abuse or neglect, please report your concern.

Contact your local police on 101 if you believe that an offence may have occurred.

Contact the police on 999 if somebody is in immediate danger of significant harm, injury or death.

Safeguarding compliance statement

We can confirm that Devon Partnership NHS Trust is compliant with the statutory requirement to undertake a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check for all staff who have patient contact, including volunteers, prior to employment.

Safeguarding policies

The Trust's safeguarding children (including child protection) and safeguarding adults policies and systems are robust and are reviewed every two years, or sooner if new national guidance or law requires them to be updated.

Safeguarding concerns about a child

The Trust also has a system in place for flagging children if there are safeguarding concerns.

Training

The Trust has a robust training strategy in place to deliver safeguarding training (both safeguarding children and safeguarding adults). Staff receive level 1, 2 or 3 depending on their role. Our aim is to ensure 90% of the relevant staff have received  training.

The Trust reports training compliance on all levels of training to the Trust's Safeguarding Committee. All records of attendance are held and monitored on the Trust's electronic staff record (ESR) system.

Named individuals

The Trust has named individuals with clear roles and responsibilities for safeguarding children and adults. They are clear about their role, have sufficient time and receive relevant support, and training, to undertake their roles, which include close contact with other health and social care organisations. 

The Chief Nursing Officer and Allied Professions Lead is the Executive Director for safeguarding and chairs the Devon Partnership NHS Trust Safeguarding Committee. The committee reports to the Board on safeguarding  issues. The membership of the Trust Safeguarding Committee includes a Non-Executive Director.

The Trust Board takes the issue of safeguarding extremely seriously and receives an annual report on safeguarding.

Infection prevention and control

Our dedicated Infection Prevention and Control Team is committed to protecting the people who use our services, staff and visitors from the risk of infections in hospital settings.

The team is led by the Director of Infection Prevention and Control and consists of specialist infection prevention and control nurses. They provide regular training to our staff with how to protect the people who use our services, visitors and themselves. They also advise them on how to care for people with specific infections. Sometimes this means our staff will wear protective clothing, such as aprons and gloves, when caring for people either, with our without an infection.

Helping to reduce the spread of infection is everyone's responsibility. It is important that patients, staff and visitors work together to reduce the risk of infection.

Hand hygiene

Hand hygiene is the most important way to prevent infection. Visitors play a key role in supporting us to remain infection free by making sure hands have been washed and by not visiting wards and units if they have suffered from diarrhoea and vomiting in the previous 48 hours. Our staff take infections seriously and are committed to keeping the people who use our services as safe and healthy as possible.

It's OK to ask

We take hand hygiene seriously but sometimes when we're really busy, we might not clean our hands as often as we should. So, if you're worried that we've forgotten, it's OK to remind us. We welcome your help in keeping everyone safe.