Brainkind Neurological Centre York

Updated 14 May 2025

Date of assessment: 26 to 27 April 2024. Brainkind Neurological Centre, York provides inpatient services for people with an acquired brain injury, which we rated as Good.  Brainkind Neurological Centre, York is a neurobehavioural hospital service for men and women over the age of 18 years, who have an acquired brain injury. The service is a part of the Brainkind charity, which provides rehabilitation and support to people following a brain injury. We carried out an on-site inspection on 9 and 10 December 2024, and reviewed data related to the service. At the time of the last inspection in January 2022, the centre was located at York House Independent Hospital, part of The Disabilities Trust and was rated Good. Since this time the service has changed its name and re-located to a new purpose-built hospital, to which people using the service were relocated on 13 February 2024. We assessed the service to ensure that people’s needs were being met. As part of this inspection, we piloted an enhanced approach to assessing the culture of the service. This involved using extended observations and conversations with people using the service, and we focused on specific aspects of the single assessment framework.  

Updated 20 November 2024

At our last inspection we rated the service overall as good.

Our rating of the service ​stayed the same​. We rated them as ​good​ because:

• Staff completed and regularly updated thorough risk assessments of all ward areas and removed or reduced any risks they identified.
• The service had enough nursing and medical staff, who knew people and received basic training to keep people safe from avoidable harm.
• Staff assessed and managed risks to people and themselves well and followed best practice in anticipating, de-escalating and managing challenging behaviour.
• Staff followed policy when using restrictive interventions. We found that there was good oversight of the use of restrictive intervention by managers and leaders.
• Staff understood how to protect people from abuse and the service worked well with other agencies to do so. Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it.
• Care plans reflected people’s assessed needs, and were personalised, holistic and recovery oriented.
• Ward teams had effective working relationships with other relevant teams within the organisation and with relevant services outside the organisation.
• There were effective bed management processes in place.
• The service treated concerns and complaints seriously, investigated them and learned lessons from the results, and shared these with the whole team and wider service.
• Leaders had a good understanding of the services they managed and could explain clearly how teams worked to provide high quality care.

However:

• There were not effective systems and processes to safely prescribe, administer, record and store medicines. Staff did not ensure that medicines were stored correctly and were in date. Staff did not always identify and correct prescribing errors.

We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this inspection.

Updated 15 September 2022