Patient Safety

Patient safety is a key priority for Spectrum across all our services and lies at the heart of everything we do as a healthcare organisation. We strive to keep patients safe and deliver a high standard of care in all our environments, including:

• Community and outreach settings
• Hospital
• Prison healthcare

Using national, local and specialty information and feedback from our services, we implement safety measures that are relevant for patients in each setting – from safe management of medication and equipment to the prevention of accidents. This means we can tailor our care to the needs of service users without compromising on quality

Incident reporting

Spectrum also operates a dedicated incident-reporting system, which allows us to identify safety concerns quickly, prevent avoidable harm and consistently improve on our existing safety processes. All incidents are reviewed to learn lessons and prevent similar incidents happening again.

We also provide safeguarding for vulnerable adults and children, ensuring that staff are trained to support vulnerable service users and protect them from risk.

Clinical Effectiveness

All clinical staff in Spectrum undertakes comprehensive training and follow national and service guidance to provide high quality care.

We conduct regular audits to ensure that the services we provide are safe, caring, effective, responsive and well-led.

We regularly review our services and look to improve our reporting processes. We are also committed to maintaining the highest standards of patient confidentiality and the responsible sharing of information. We also aim to ensure that we provide support to service users if they have any communication difficulties including sight, hearing, language or learning disability.

ISO (the international organisation for standardisation) is a worldwide organisation of national standards bodies. Under ISO, Spectrum was inspected against two key standards: ISO 9001 in Quality Management Systems and ISO 14001 in Environmental Management Systems. To meet the ISO 9001 quality mark, areas such as customer focus, leadership, engagement of people, process approach, improvement, evidence-based decision making and relationship management were assessed. With ISO 14001 (the environmental management standard), there were 79 requirements that need to be met and Spectrum is assessed against these upon inspection.. The ISO 14001 in Environmental Management Systems in particular helps organisations improve their environmental performance through more efficient use of resources and reduction of waste, gaining a competitive advantage and the trust of stakeholders.

Disability Confident Employer

In October 2016 Spectrum CIC attained the Disability Confident Employer status, this is a government scheme designed to encourage employers to recruit and retain disabled people and those with health conditions.

As a Disability Confident employer, we have committed to the following actions:

• Actively looking to attract and recruit disabled people
• Providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process
• Offering an interview to disabled people who meet the essential criteria for the job
• Being flexible when assessing people so disabled job applicants have the best opportunity to demonstrate that they can do the job
• Making reasonable adjustments as required
• Encouraging our suppliers and partner firms to be Disability Confident
• Ensuring employees have sufficient disability equality awareness
• Promoting a culture of being Disability Confident
• Supporting employees to manage their disabilities or health conditions
• Ensuring there are no barriers to the development and progression of disabled staff
• Ensuring managers are aware of how they can support staff who are sick or absent from work
• Valuing and listening to feedback from disabled staff
• Reviewing our Disability Confident self-assessment

Mindful Employer Charter

MINDFUL EMPLOYER is a NHS initiative run by Workways, a service of Devon Partnership NHS Trust. Workways supports people with a mental health condition to find or remain in employment.

As an employer we recognise that:

• People who have mental health issues may have experienced discrimination in recruitment and selection procedures. This may discourage them from seeking employment.
• Whilst some people will acknowledge their experience of mental health issues in a frank and open way, others fear that stigma will jeopardise their chances of getting a job.
• Given appropriate support, the vast majority of people who have experienced mental ill health continue to work successfully as do many with ongoing issues.

As an employer we aim to:

• Show a positive and enabling attitude to employees and job applicants with mental health issues. This will include positive statements in local recruitment literature.
• Ensure that all staff involved in recruitment and selection are briefed on mental health issues and The Equality Act 2010*, and given appropriate interview skills.
• Make it clear in any recruitment or occupational health check that people who have experienced mental health issues will not be discriminated against and that disclosure of a mental health problem will enable both employee and employer to assess and provide the right level of support or adjustment.
• Not make assumptions that a person with a mental health problem will be more vulnerable to workplace stress or take more time off than any other employee or job applicant.
• Provide non-judgemental and proactive support to individual staff who experience mental health issues.
• Ensure all line managers have information and training about managing mental health in the workplace.

The Workplace Wellbeing Charter

The Workplace Wellbeing Charter is an opportunity for employers to demonstrate their commitment to the health and well-being of their workforce. It is a statement of intent, showing an organisation’s commitment to the health of its staff.  The Charter focuses on three key areas – leadership, culture and communication, where even small steps can make a big difference to the health of staff, and therefore the health of the organisation.