A report following that visit, published on Thursday, found some improvements in care but highlighted significant concerns about staffing and the treatment of some children.
One patient reported being told she was “pathetic” and “selfish” for needing to be fed using a nasogastric tube.
Another said that if she self-harmed, some nurses would not clean blood from her face before walking through the ward area to the treatment room.
The findings of the report included a “significant issue” with staffing levels at the facility, with some staff reporting feeling “burnt out” as a result of the pressure they were working under.
The report found patients and families were positive about most members of staff but said they had concerns about the attitudes of others.
It found nursing staff were regularly working additional hours, and that there was a reliance on temporary “bank” staff or staff from adult wards, who it was said “did not understand how to interact with teenagers”.
The report also raised concerns about the way the use of restraint by staff was being recorded, including under-reporting the number of times a child was restrained.
Young people described restraints from untrained agency staff as “rough” but found all recorded instances were “proportionate to the level of risk being managed”.