Prevention of Future Deaths reports · 2021

Roy Morris

Regulation 28 report to prevent future deaths, reference 2021-0094, written 29 Mar 2021. A coroner writes one of these when an inquest reveals a risk that could cause further deaths unless something changes.

Date of report29 Mar 2021
Reference2021-0094
DeceasedRoy Morris
CoronerCrispin Butler
Coroner areaBuckinghamshire
CategoryHospital Death (Clinical Procedures and medical management) related deaths · Suicide (from 2015)
Organisation namedOxford Health NHS Foundation Trust
Sourcejudiciary.uk record · original PDF
Responses published1

The report

Text recovered by OCR from a scanned PDF. OCR is imperfect: check anything you rely on against the source PDF. Reproduced verbatim, including the scan's own layout.

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C.G.BUTLER
SENIOR CORONER + BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

REGULATION 28 REPORT TO PREVENT FUTURE DEATHS
THIS REPORT IS BEING SENT TO:

1. The Chief Executive, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust

1 | CORONER

| am CRISPIN GILES BUTLER, senior coroner for the coroner area of Buckinghamshire

2 | CORONER’S LEGAL POWERS

| make this report under paragraph 7, Schedule 5, of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009
and Regulations 28 and 29 of the Coroners (Investigations) Regulations 2013.

http://www. legislation.gov/uk/ukpga/2009/25/schedule/5/paragraph/7

http://www. legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/1629/pdfs/uksi/2013/1629/part/7/made

3 | INVESTIGATION and INQUEST

On 18 July 2019 | commenced an investigation into the death of Roy Keith MORRIS,
aged 60 years. The investigation concluded at the end of the inquest on 26'" March
2021.

The medical cause of death was hanging.
The narrative conclusion of the inquest was:

Roy Morris died as a result of suicide to which the following contributed more

than minimally:

(a) that the fact that there was no detailed written care plan for Roy on
discharge as an inpatient into the care of the community and acute day
hospital teams;

(b) the fact that his care coordinator was only allocated shortly before
discharge; and

(c) the fact that Roy’s family were not provided with the means to engage fully
and candidly with the inpatient team.

Coroner’s Office, 29 Windsor End, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. HP9 2JJ

C.G.BUTLER
SENIOR CORONER + BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE DEATH

Roy Morris was found deceased in Birch Wood off the A40 between Gerrards
Cross and Beaconsfield on 30th June 2019. It is probable that Roy hanged
himself in the wood on the night of 26"/27"t May 2019. He was last seen in the
vicinity shortly after 7pm on the 26"" May 2019 and there was no further contact
subsequently.

At the time of his death, Roy was under the care of the local community mental
health team and had been attending the acute day hospital having been
discharged from inpatient care on 17'" May 2019.

When Roy was discharged to the community mental health team, he did not
have a detailed written care plan in place.

During the period of Roy’s stay as an inpatient Roy’s family were not provided
with the means to engage fully and candidly with the inpatient team about their
experiences of how Roy was presenting to them.

A care coordinator, whose role is central to the coordination of care between the
patient, his family and the mental health teams, was only allocated to Roy
shortly before he was discharged.

CORONER’S CONCERNS

During the course of the inquest the evidence revealed matters giving rise to concern. In
my opinion there is a risk that future deaths could occur unless action is taken. In the
circumstances it is my statutory duty to report to you.

The MATTERS OF CONCERN are as follows. —

1.

The application of the CPA policy for patients such as Roy so that they will have
a detailed care plan with which they can engage and which informs the family,
the care coordinator and the community team on discharge from the inpatient
setting.

Reinforcing the importance of the role of care coordinator and ensuring the
timely allocation to inpatients shortly after admission so that they can work over
a meaningful period with the patient, the family and the mental health teams in
anticipation of the discharge into the community.

Coroner’s Office, 29 Windsor End, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. HP9 2JJ

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SFO H B®,
THOR

C.G.BUTLER
SENIOR CORONER + BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

ACTION SHOULD BE TAKEN

In my opinion action should be taken to prevent future deaths and | believe your
organisation have the power to take such action.

YOUR RESPONSE

You are under a duty to respond to this report within 56 days of the date of this report,
namely by 24'" May 2021.

|, the coroner, may extend the period.

Your response must contain details of action taken or proposed to be taken, setting out
the timetable for action. Otherwise you must explain why no action is proposed.

COPIES and PUBLICATION

| have sent a copy of my report to the Chief Coroner and to the following Interested
Persons:

The Family of Roy Morris

Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust

Care Quality Commission

| am also under a duty to send the Chief Coroner a copy of your response.

The Chief Coroner may publish either or both in a complete or redacted or summary
form. He may send a copy of this report to any person who he believes may find it useful
or of interest. You may make representations to me, the coroner, at the time of your
response, about the release or the publication of your response by the Chief Coroner.

29" March 2021

Crispin Giles Butler, Senior Coroner for Buckinghamshire

Coroner’s Office, 29 Windsor End, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. HP9 2JJ

Responses

1 response published against this report on judiciary.uk. A response is a body's written reply to the coroner's concerns; publication is at the discretion of the Chief Coroner's office, so an absent response does not mean nobody replied.

Response from Littlemore Mental Health Centre (PDF)
Mr C Butler 
HM’s Senior Coroner for Buckinghamshire 
29 Windsor End 
Beaconsfield 
Buckinghamshire 
HP9 2JJ 

Chief Executive’s Office

Trust Headquarters   

Littlemore Mental Health Centre
Sandford Road
Littlemore
Oxford
OX4 4XN

19 May 2021 

Dear Senior Coroner Butler, 

REGULATION 28:  REPORT TO PREVENT FUTURE DEATHS  
INQUEST INTO THE DEATH OF ROY MORRIS 

I write on behalf of Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust to respond to your Regulation 28 
Report following the inquest into the sad death of Mr Roy Keith Morris, which you concluded 
on 26th March 2021.  You raised matters of concern which are as follows –  

1.  The application of the CPA policy for patients such as Roy so that they will have a detailed 
care plan with which they can engage and which informs the family the care coordinator 
and the community team on discharge from the inpatient setting. 

2.  Reinforcing  the  importance  of  the  role  of  care  coordinator  and  insuring  the  timely 
allocation to inpatients shortly after admission so that they can work over a meaningful 
period with the patient, the family and the mental health teams in  anticipation  of the 
discharge into the community. 

I will state immediately that as an organisation we understand and accept the concerns that 
you have raised.  As stated in your  report, our CPA policy stipulates the requirement  of  a 
detailed  care  plan  and  recommends  that  the  individual  (our  patient)  and  their  family  are 
involved in designing the plan of care and support required to ensure a timely and smooth 
discharge  from  hospital.  We  have  therefore  sought  to  strengthen the  understanding  and 
application of our policy within our teams by creating a task and finish group with relevant 
clinicians. The group’s main functions will be as follows: 

-  To focus on the role of the Care Coordinator: the expectations of the role and the 
interventions and engagement required in discharge planning in line with our CPA 
policy. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 -  To review the standard operating policies for our community mental health teams to 
reflect  the  standards  of  practice  expected  in  the  role of  care  coordinator,  which  is 
pivotal to the delivery of care. 

-  To review the induction process and package for both permanent and locum staff, 
with an aide memoire for both existing staff and new and locum staff to familiarise 
themselves  with  the  role  and  expected  standard  of  practice  for  the  role  and  their 
team’s structure and processes. 

-  To  review  the  structure  and  process  of  care  coordinator  allocation  within  mental 
health  community  teams  and  the  expectations  of  the  role  in  order  to  ensure 
adherence of the Trust CPA policy. 

-  To review the daily bed management and escalations meetings to capture care co-
ordinator allocation and clear communication between the mental health community 
teams and inpatient teams. This will involve discussion at each ward’s rapid reviews 
(which are held three times per week on each of the acute wards) and escalations at 
our twice daily teleconferences (chaired by senior nurses and service managers) for 
our  inpatient  and  our  community  teams.  This  work  will  be  supported  through  the 
newly appointed patient flow manager and will strengthen the daily action log from 
the bed escalation meetings to quickly identify and resolve with service managers any 
barriers to completing the allocation of care coordinators. The revised bed meetings 
and escalations calls will ensure that we are allocating care coordinators at the earliest 
opportunity to support engagement in discharge planning. 

Once  the  Standard  Operating  Procedure  for  Community  Mental  Health  Teams  has  been  
finalised, with  easy-to-follow guidelines as aide memoires, the Head of Service and Head of 
Nursing will jointly deliver a series of workshops and road shows with all community teams 
to  disseminate  the  updated  and  focused  material  to  support  the  required  consistency  in 
approach to care coordination. The workshops will commence in early June 2021. 

In addition to the above work, we currently have several initiatives underway to support our 
work  to  improve  the  quality  of  engagement  with  families.    The  Trust’s  Buckinghamshire 
Mental  Health  directorate  is  leading  Trust  quality  improvement  work  within  the  next  12 
months  on  working  with  families,  the  goal  of  which  is  to  improve  our  engagement  and 
embrace the Triangle of Care. 

To explain, the ‘Triangle of Care’ is a working collaboration, or “therapeutic alliance” between 
the  service  user,  professional  and  carer/s  that  promotes  safety,  supports  recovery,  and 
sustains well-being. The Triangle of Care adopts six principles, all of which we are embedding 
in practice as follows: 

-  Carers  and  the  essential  role  they  play  should  be  identified  at  first  contact  with 
services or as soon as possible thereafter:  we are using better lives assessments and 
carers’ assessments to identify who are carers and how best to work with them, as 
well as using our admission check lists audits to ensure standards are adhered to. 

2 

 
 
 -  Staff should be aware of carers and trained to engage with carers more effectively. 
The Trust has reviewed and re-launched the Trust’s carers’ strategy. Carers awareness 
training forms part of the carers’ strategy being rolled out within our teams. 

-  Policies  and  protocols  should  be  in  place  to  ensure  confidentiality  and  improve 

information sharing with carers – this is in place within our teams in the Trust. 

-  Defined roles (Carer link workers) responsible for carers should be in place – this is in 

place within our teams. 

-  Carers  should  be  “introduced”  to  the  service  and  provided  with  a  range  of 
information.  We  are  capturing  this  on  the  wards  with  our  carers  link  nurses  and 
primary  nurses  offering  one  to  one  time  with  carers  within  72  hours  of  a  patient 
admission to the ward.  

-  A range of carer support services should be available to which to offer or signpost 

carers. 

We  will  be  happy  to  share  with  you  our  agreed  standard  operating  procedure  and  the 
associated guidelines for care coordinators alongside the completed Quality Improvement 
project and outcome from the work with families group, which we hope will assure you that 
we are committed to strengthen both the importance of the role of care coordinator and 
ensuring the timely allocation of care coordinators to patients after admission in order that 
they can work over a meaningful period with the patient, the family and the mental health 
teams in anticipation of each patient’s discharge back into the community. 

Yours sincerely 

Chief Executive  

3

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