ALDER Hey Children's NHS Foundation Trust has been rated as "good" after an inspection found "significant improvements” to its services.

A Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection, carried out in June, rated both the Trust and the hospital “good” overall.

The trust's inpatient Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services received a rating of Good.

CAMHS in the community were rated as Requires Improvement.

During the inspection in June, a team of inspectors and specialists including doctors, nurses, managers and experts by experience visited Alder Hey Hospital, and community-based CAMHS provided by the trust.

It followed concerns that had been highlighted during a previous trust wide inspection in May last year. They included a shortage of nurses, lack of senior doctors on the high dependency unit, and long waiting times for outpatients.

Visiting inspectors looked specifically at critical care, outpatients and diagnostic imaging services and services for young people transitioning to adult services.

They also looked at the safety of medical care and surgery.

Inspectors found that the trust had responded positively to the findings of CQC's previous inspection and significant improvements had been made in a number of areas.

The chief inspector of hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, said: "The trust has made significant improvements across the board and staff should be proud of what they have achieved.

"We saw that staff across the organisation were passionate about their work and committed to delivering and securing the best for the children and young people they cared for.

“We were particularly impressed by the work undertaken to improve transitional services for young people.

"The benefits to patients were clearly evident with young people being well supported to access appropriate services as they moved in to adulthood.

"The compassion and care shown by staff was outstanding, particularly in critical care and inpatient child and adolescent mental health services and the trust’s senior team had made good progress in developing an integrated organisation with staff working better together across teams.

"We did, however, also see some areas where the trust needed to make improvements.

"We will return in due course to check on the progress that they have made.”