On 1 December 2021, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) published its Community Mental Health Survey 2021.

Over 250 NELFT patients responded to the survey, which asks adults who use community mental health services about their experiences.

This year’s results are relatively comparable to last year’s (2020), despite the unique nature of care provision during the Covid-19 pandemic.  This indicates a consolidation in our position which is similar for the majority of Mental Health Trusts across the country.

The results show some pleasing progress across the board on previous years.

NELFT performed somewhat better than the national average for both:

• Whether people got the help they needed from crisis / out-of-hours services.
• Whether the service involved a member of family or someone else close the patient as much as the patient would have liked.

Whilst the CQC recommends not comparing data from the 2020 dataset due to the impact of the pandemic, we can see marked improvements from 2019's survey, including:

• Telling patients who is in charge of organising their care and services.
• Patients feeling involved in agreeing the care they receive.
• Patients feeling like they were treated with dignity and respect.

Despite slight improvements from 2019, our lowest mark was in asking patients to give their views on the quality of care they received.

Wellington Makala, Executive Chief Nursing Officer, said:

“The results of this survey show pleasing progress in our out-of-hours crisis services, as well as involving patients and loved ones in their care.”

“We value patient feedback and will address any needs for improvement, however I want to thank staff for their incredible hard work in what has been an extremely challenging year.”

The national results are available on the CQC website.