The Care Quality Commission has confirmed it is prosecuting a North East NHS Trust over three deaths and what it alleges was "avoidable harm".
The Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Trust - which runs mental health services in County Durham and Teesside - is due to appear before Teesside Magistrates' Court on May 17 this year. The CQC has brought a prosecution over alleged breaches of the Health and Social Care Act in relation to three deaths.
The prosecution relates to regulation 12 of the Act - which exists to "prevent people from receiving unsafe care and treatment and prevent avoidable harm or risk of harm". It is a criminal offence to breach the Act if "a failure to meet the regulation results in avoidable harm to a person using the service or if a person using the service is exposed to significant risk of harm".
Last June, the CQC confirmed it's intention to prosecute the Trust over the care provided to Newton Aycliffe teenager Christie Harnett, who died under its care. She was just 17 when she took her own life at the former West Lane Hospital in Middlesbrough in 2019. Now the agency has confirmed it's prosecution now covers three patient deaths - though at this stage the agency has not confirmed the identities of those patients.
In November, independent reports highlighted a staggering 119 failings in the care of Christie and two other teenage patients - 17-year-old Nadia Sharif and 18-year-old Emily Moore - who died within eight months of one another. Christie's grandmother Casey Tremain told ChronicleLive how her family were still fighting for a statutory public inquiry to be held.
A spokesperson for Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust said: “We have fully cooperated with the Care Quality Commission’s investigation and continue to work closely with them. We remain focused on delivering safe and kind care to our patients and have made significant progress in the last couple of years."
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