The South Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (SEPT) is celebrating being named an 'excellent' trust for the second year running, following results released by the Healthcare Commission today.

The findings were announced in the Annual Health Check: a system which scores all NHS trusts in the country on aspects of their performance, including the quality of the services they provide to patients and the public and how well they manage their finances and other resources such as their property and staff.

SEPT was awarded the top score of 'excellent' in the two categories: use of resources and quality of services.

The Trust, which provides mental health and learning disability services to the people of south Essex, and forensic services to the whole of the county, was the only mental health and learning disability trust in Essex to have achieved the highest possible honour by being awarded 'excellent' in both categories. The Trust is also one of only two mental health trusts in the country to achieve this result for two consecutive years.

Dr Patrick Geoghegan OBE, Chief Executive, praised staff for achieving the accolade and said; "I am delighted with our results and I am incredibly proud of everyone in this organisation and the commitment of our partners and stakeholders."

As a foundation trust with a membership in excess of 10,500 people, we owe it to those we serve, our membership and staff, to prove we can do an excellent job, make good use of available resources and continue to be an excellent Trust."

SEPT was also one of only ten trusts across the country to feature in a special one off publication published by the Healthcare Commission highlighting the excellent working done by the Trust. The Healthcare Commission praised the Trust by saying; "South Essex is one of the highest-performing trusts in our Central region. It has scored consistently highly in every year of the annual health check and also performed well in this year's review of acute inpatient mental health services. This was particularly true in areas including service user involvement, care planning, governance, information for service users and carers, and the safety of staff.

"The trust is working hard on its service user involvement and customer service. It has a customer service strategy in place, which is a pioneering step. It carries out 'mystery shopping' on a regular basis to check its own performance, and also has a detailed action plan in place based on feedback received from our patient survey."

The Healthcare Commission is the independent statutory inspection body for both the NHS and the private and voluntary healthcare sectors. It exists to promote improvements in the quality of healthcare in England and Wales. www.healthcarecommission

South Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust
southessex-trust.nhs