A NEW inquiries team established for Lancashire’s main mental health care provider is looking into seven deaths and several other serious incidents.

Three suspected suicides, two within the crisis resolution and home treatment team and one in the complex care and treatment team, along with one patient confirmed to have ended his or her own life, are being probed by Lancashire Care’s new ‘investigations and learning’ team.

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No details have been released of the locations of the suspected suicides by the NHS trust, which covers the six boroughs of East Lancashire.

Investigators are also examining the rapid deterioration of a Longridge Community Hospital patient, due to a head injury following a suspected fall.

Another patient at The Harbour in Blackpool, which provides countywide specialist care, is the focus of a separate review, amid concerns centring on medication and physical health.

Answers are being sought over how a patient at Guild Lodge found, took and distributed medication within the medium and low-secure unit.

Four prisoner deaths, as the trust provides inmate medical services, have also been reported at Wymott, Liverpool and Garth jails, alongside a serious patient-on-patient assault at the Scarisbrick Unit in Ormskirk and an incident where patient records were left in a waiting room at Blackpool Victoria Hospital.

Prof Heather Tierney Moore, trust chief executive, said in a report: “This new team will undertake the investigation of all serious incidents across the trust, providing expert capability and capacity to identify learning and support improvement in safety and quality.

“The establishment of this team is in-keeping with national directions to improve the effectiveness of the serious incident process and ensure that families and staff are fully involved.”

In each case a formal investigation is now underway and incidents have been reported to commissioners, NHS England and regulators.

Hospital trusts were criticised for their failure to involve families in the investigation process by the Care Quality Commission last month.

Last year procedural changes were pledged after 20-year-old Sally Hickling took her own life within a psychiatric intensive care unit at The Harbour, after staff reduced her monitoring levels.