Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust

(asked on 8th September 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 7 September 2016 to Question 44738 and with reference to the Report by Mazars, entitled Independent review of deaths of people with a learning disability or mental health problem in contact with Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust April 2011 to March 2015, published in December 2015, what steps he has taken in response to the finding of that report that the systems Southern Health Trust had in place provide no evidence that the Trust has fully reported or investigated unexpected deaths or taken remedial action where appropriate; in what circumstances it is his policy to investigate senior staffing decisions at NHS trusts; and if he will make it his policy to investigate senior staffing decisions in NHS trusts which are taken in response to critical findings of independent reviews.


Answered by
Jeremy Hunt Portrait
Jeremy Hunt
Chancellor of the Exchequer
This question was answered on 13th September 2016

I have no role in decisions about individual chief executives or other staff in National Health Service trusts and foundation trusts (FTs). Oversight of trusts is primarily the responsibility of NHS Improvement, which provides updates to Ministers and the department as appropriate. Since the Mazars report and the report issued by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in April 2016, NHS Improvement has been liaising closely with Southern Health, supporting the trust to address the issues set out in both reports.

In response to the Mazars report into Southern Health, I have asked NHS England, NHS Improvement and the CQC to take a number of steps to address the issues raised. As a result, the CQC and NHS Improvement are working to support NHS trusts and FTs to better understand their avoidable mortality and to then take effective action to improve safety; the Department has published independently assured, Ofsted-style ratings of the quality of care offered to people with learning disabilities for all 209 clinical commissioning group areas; and, NHS England commissioned the first Learning Disability Mortality Review Programme to support local areas to review deaths of people with learning disabilities and act on the information to improve care.

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