The Agnes Unit

What Does Our Service Do?

The Agnes Unit is a 20 bedded inpatient service for adults with learning disabilities. The unit provides an inpatient service for individuals whose mental health, behaviour and risk cannot be supported in the community.

The unit provides this service to Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

It is made up of five individual pods each with four en-suite bedrooms, two bathrooms, lounge, dining room, kitchen and office as well as a courtyard and access to a very large garden. Each pod offers maximum opportunities for single sex areas.

We provide a person centred approach to enable and empower our patients, offering a multi-disciplinary team within one building.

We also have eight beds for patients’ who need longer term support. These individuals are either on the forensic care pathway or have been repatriated to Leicester from out of county placements. The aim of the longer stay beds are to rehabilitate and support patients to be able to live safely in the community.

The other 12 beds are for patients who need shorter term admission for assessment and treatment. This is either planned or as an emergency due to crisis situations that may arise in the community.

How Does Our Service Work?

Patients may be admitted informally or detained under the Mental Health Act. For patients staying informally a deprivation of liberty assessment will be carried out

On the day of admission a patient can expect to be orientated to the unit by staff, welcomed onto a pod and introduced to the key people in their care.

Patients and carers will be given a brochure about the unit and practical advice about their stay/admission.

They will be allocated a named nurse who will work with them to complete a full assessment of their needs and develop care plans to support this, which will be regularly reviewed and evaluated.

Patients and carers will be invited to their meetings in line with the CPA process as will all the members of their care team both in-patient and in the community. To ensure continuity the role of CPA coordinator will continue to be carried out by the patients community professional.

Patients will be given regular feedback from meetings and given the opportunity for advocacy services, tribunals, 2nd opinion doctors and their rights to appeal.

Patients, on admission, will have an exit strategy agreed and a comprehensive discharge pack when they leave the unit.

We have 20 qualified members of nursing staff, broken up by one matron, three Senior staff nurses and 16 staff nurses. We have administrative support on site and a therapy team that consists of psychiatry, psychology, occupational therapy and speech and language therapists.

In addition we have 60 Health Care Support Workers currently employed.

Our bed occupancy is 89% for the past year with an average of 26.6 weeks length of stay for our patients.