This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

A NHS trust criticised for its "appalling standards of care" has been forced to apologise after a baby boy was found with a dummy taped to his face in one of its hospitals.

Mid Staffordshire NHS foundation trust said a member of staff had been suspended and that police were investigating the incident, which took place at Stafford hospital earlier this month.

Colin Ovington, director of nursing and midwifery at the trust, said: "One of our recent incidents involved a dummy that was found taped on to a baby's face. Fortunately, the baby was unharmed.

"The incident is under investigation by the police and so we are unable to give any more information at the moment. A member of staff has been suspended pending the outcome of the police investigation and the trust's investigation under our disciplinary policy."

Ovington described the incident as an "exceptional occurrence", apologised to the baby's family, and said the trust's new "zero tolerance" approach to poor patient care encouraged staff to report "any potential serious incidents" in its hospitals.

He added: "We want other hospitals to learn from this incident so that we can be sure that it does not happen to any other baby."

A spokesman for Staffordshire police said officers were in the early stages of investigating a complaint about the treatment of a baby boy by a member of Stafford hospital staff.

"The baby boy, who was four months old at the time, was not harmed as a result," he said. "We are liaising closely with his family and the NHS trust concerning the matter."

The report from the public inquiry into failings at the trust will be published on 6 February. It is understood the inquiry chairman, Robert Francis QC, will recommend wide-ranging reforms of the NHS.

The £11m review of what went wrong at Stafford hospital between January 2005 and March 2009 is expected to suggest that hospitals that cover up doctors' mistakes and offer patients poor treatment should face fines and possible closure.

A separate, highly critical report by the Healthcare Commission in 2009 revealed a catalogue of failings at the trust and said "appalling standards" had put patients at risk.

In a three-year period from 2005 to 2008, the commission said, between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected.

In February 2010, an independent inquiry into events at the trust found it had "routinely neglected patients".

A recent report, conducted by a team of independent experts on behalf of the regulator, Monitor, concluded that Mid Staffs was "financially and clinically unsustainable".

It recently emerged the trust had paid out more than £1m in compensation to 120 victims of abuse or their families.