Cygnet Hospital Stevenage

On this page

• Overview
• Assessing needs
• Delivering evidence-based care and treatment
• How staff, teams and services work together
• Supporting people to live healthier lives
• Monitoring and improving outcomes
• Consent to care and treatment

Staff completed comprehensive mental health and physical health assessments. The team Included a full range of specialists who managed and monitored care and treatment with patients to meet their individual needs. Staff supported patients to live healthier lives.

This service scored 79 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The service maximised the effectiveness of people’s care and treatment by assessing and reviewing their health, care, wellbeing and communication needs with them.

During the assessment we reviewed 3 care records. Staff completed a comprehensive mental health assessment of the patient in a timely manner at, or soon after, admission.

Staff developed care plans that met the needs identified during assessment. Care plans were personalised, holistic and recovery oriented.

We saw evidence of Mental Health Act and Mental Capacity Act compliance within the patient care and management records.

There was evidence of patient involvement and discussion in care planning and patients we spoke with confirmed this.

Staff used positive behaviour support (PBS) strategies to meet patients’ individual needs. Interventions were built around avoiding risk by identifying early triggers and reducing the effect of these. We saw examples of a PBS plan that had been devised with the individual and a psychology assistant.

Staff assessed patients’ physical health needs in a timely manner after admission. Patients’ physical health was regularly monitored and checked. We saw within care plans we reviewed that when patients refused physical health observations staff continued to encourage them to consent. Where necessary, when an issue with mental capacity was identified, a capacity assessment took place and a best interests meeting was held.

The service planned and delivered people’s care and treatment with them, including what is important and matters to them and in line with legislation and current evidence-based good practice and standards.

Staff provided a range of care and treatment interventions suitable for the patient group. The interventions were those recommended by, and were delivered in line with, guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

Staff understood their roles and responsibilities under the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Mental Health Act Code of Practice and discharged these well.

The team included or had access to the full range of specialists required to meet the needs of patients in the service including doctors and nurses, occupational therapists, clinical psychologists, social workers, pharmacists and healthcare assistants.

The service provided a range of therapeutic activities including yoga, boxing, gym sessions, cookery, arts and crafts, music therapy, psychology groups, and pet therapy. Evening and weekend activities were also offered. We saw activity boards on the wards showing occupational therapy sessions. There was a weekly ward-based activities timetable, and every patient had an individualised therapeutic activity timetable.

Psychologists and psychology assistants supported patients to better manage emotions and distress through therapeutic activities and skills, learning such as psychoeducational sessions, mindfulness sessions, sleep hygiene, and stress vulnerability. They used evidence-based interventions including Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (Skills), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Positive Behaviour Support. Psychologists worked with patients and their families to develop collaborative formulations.

Staff ensured that patients had good access to physical healthcare, including access to specialists when needed. The service had recently employed 2 physical healthcare nurses. The service had clinical nurse managers who knew the patients well.

Staff assessed and met patients’ needs for food, drink and for specialist nutrition and hydration. We saw examples of this in care records.

Staff were experienced and qualified and had the right skills and knowledge to meet the needs of the patient group.

Managers provided staff with supervision and appraisal of their work performance. As of September 2025, the percentage of staff that received regular supervision was 100% for all wards except for Tiffany ward which was at 83%. The percentage of staff that had received an appraisal of their work was 100% (Pattison ward), 91% (Chamberlain ward), 90% (Orchid ward) and 88% (Tiffany ward).

Managers ensured that staff received the necessary specialist training for their roles. Specialist training examples included dialectic behaviour therapy essentials, emotional wellbeing, awareness of self-harm and suicide and ligature risk awareness.

Managers identified the learning needs of staff and there were opportunities for professional development including nurse associate apprenticeships.

Staff worked effectively across teams and services to support people, by sharing their assessment of needs when they move between different services.

Staff held regular and effective multidisciplinary meetings. The teams had effective working relationships, including good handovers and regular team meetings. Staff shared information about patients at daily site handover meetings this included discussions around staffing, incidents, safeguarding and maintenance issues. We observed a morning site handover. Staff discussed each patient and clearly shared any presenting risks or concerns on each shift.

Staff had effective working relationships with teams outside the organisation including for example, local authority social services and General Practitioners.

The service did not have a local catchment area, and almost all patients were out of area placement. Managers told us they worked closely with the NHS out of area commissioners and bed managers to ensure all out of area service users were either repatriated to their local area if a bed became available or discharged in line with their treatment pathway.

The service supported people to manage their health and wellbeing so they could maximise their independence, choice and control, live healthier lives and where possible, reduce their future needs for care and support.

Patients were offered personalised healthy lifestyle interventions such as advice on healthy eating, physical activity and access to smoking cessation services. The hospital was a smoke free environment.

Every patient had an individualised therapeutic activity timetable devised towards a healthy lifestyle. We saw ward activities timetables helped to promote healthy lifestyles. Patients could access the gym, and fitness activities such as trauma informed yoga, Pilates, walking and football. Exercise diaries and charts had been developed, and patients could also enrol on AQA UK qualifications in fitness and exercise-based courses supervised by the service’s gym instructor.

Patient menus were regularly reviewed with input from the dietitian. The menus included a dietary and allergy information alongside an easy read version with advice as to which options were the heathiest choices each day. The dietician met with patients to discuss and agree goals for daily health management, including weight management, cholesterol and blood pressure management, dietary information and nutritional information for planning meals.

Alongside supporting the patients, the gym was also available to staff for their wellbeing. Staff could also order nutritional meals for their lunch for free.

The service routinely monitored people’s care and treatment to continuously improve it and to ensure that outcomes were positive and consistent, and that they met both clinical expectations and the expectations of people themselves.

The service used recognised tools such as the Global Assessment of Progress (GAP, reviews a person’s progress whilst in the service) and DIALOG (a scale that measures a person’s quality of life and experience of care) to monitor people’s treatment progress at the point of admission and discharge.

Multidisciplinary staff worked with patients to identify long and short-term goals and objectives to work towards.

The average length of stay for patients ranged between 33.3 days (Chamberlain ward) to 49.7 (Tiffany ward).

The service told people about their rights around consent and respected these when they delivered person-centred care and treatment.

Staff took all practical steps to enable patients to make their own decisions. There was evidence within care records that staff complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005. For patients who might have impaired mental capacity, staff assessed and recorded capacity to consent appropriately. They did this on a decision-specific basis with regard to significant decisions.

We reviewed patients’ medication charts and saw people detained under the Mental Health Act (MHA), had been prescribed and administered medicines in line with MHA consent to treatment authorisations. T2 and T3 three monthly audits were 100% compliant across all wards.