The Chelsea Psychology Clinic

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

This means we looked for evidence that people’s care, treatment and support achieved good outcomes and promoted a good quality of life, based on the best available evidence.

This is the first inspection of this service since it registered. This key question has been rated good.

Care and treatment were delivered effectively and in line with national guidance and best practice. Individual care plans were subject to regular multidisciplinary review and updated to reflect clients' changing needs. Staff from different professional backgrounds worked collaboratively to coordinate care, support positive outcomes, and ensure clients received high-quality, person-centred treatment.

We have not awarded this service a score for Effective.

Find out about when we will not publish a key question score and what we look at when we assess Effective.

We reviewed 15 care and treatment records for people under 18 accessing the service.

Staff completed initial assessments of clients’ needs at the point of first contact, followed by more comprehensive assessments during subsequent formulation appointments with an allocated clinician. During the first contact triage conversation, staff discussed the range of treatment pathways available and considered which approach would best meet the individual’s needs. Where appropriate, a client’s parents and/or carers would be involved in discussions and decisions. Staff recorded client’s wishes on parent and carer involvement in discussions, sessions and information.

Where appropriate, staff incorporated information about clients’ physical health into assessment and treatment planning. This included measures such as blood pressure, pulse, height, and weight. For clients seen remotely, this information was self-reported. Records showed that clients provided supporting evidence, such as images of readings taken at their GP. Where specialist assessments or screenings were required, the service either requested these from external providers or supported clients to access appropriate services.

Staff developed treatment plans that reflected the needs identified during assessment. Records demonstrated that formulation and treatment approaches were personalised, holistic, and recovery oriented. Staff reviewed needs at each appointment and updated care records accordingly to ensure ongoing support remained appropriate and responsive to the client’s progress.

The service had carefully considered the range of care and treatment interventions that would be suitable and effective for their client group. Interventions were those recommended by, and were delivered in line with, guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. These included psychological therapies and medication.

The team included psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists who were trained in providing cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), cognitive analytic therapy (CAT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), Gottman Method couples therapy, mentalization based treatment, mindfulness based cognitive therapy, Compassion focused therapy (CFT), dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT), dynamic interpersonal therapy (DIT), eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR), narrative therapy and schema therapy. The service also provided assessments and treatment of ADHD and Autism (ASD).

The service employed a specialist nutritionist who could carry out assessments and provide individualised advice to clients and families.

Staff were experienced and qualified and had the right skills and knowledge to meet the needs of the client group. The service had introduced an additional online assessment step to their recruitment practise to ensure all applicants who interviewed would be suitable for the service.

The service had a strong supervision structure and approach in place. Each clinician had a supervisor they met with regularly for clinical supervision. All staff we spoke with confirmed they had access to regular and supportive clinical supervision. Staff told us they felt supported by their supervisors who were always accessible. Supervision compliance rates were averaging at 89% across the year at the time of our inspection.

The percentage of staff who had received an appraisal in the last 12 months was 100%. Due to working patterns, clinical staff did not meet at regular service wide meetings but had opportunities to engage with and liaise with colleagues during training sessions, group supervision and case management. Where information needed to be cascaded to the whole clinical group, this was done via emails, bulletins and supervision sessions.

Where liaison with other organisations was needed, we saw staff carried this out promptly and stored documentation in the client notes.

Staff participated in some clinical audits. These included clinical safety kit inspection and an improving outcomes audit.

The service offered treatments face to face in one of their locations, or online, at the request of the client.

The service also offered an extensive programme of training in several areas of continuing professional development.

Senior leadership staff met regularly to discuss the running of the service, including organisational and clinical issues identified through oversight and feedback processes. Where information needed to be communicated to the wider staff group, this was shared via email and reinforced through supervision with individual clinicians.

Staff had regular opportunities to come together as a group for training and professional development.

We saw evidence that the service worked effectively with external partners, including GPs, schools, and specialist medical services, to obtain relevant information required for comprehensive assessments. Clinic letters were routinely shared with clients’ GPs, in line with client consent.

Staff reported that they felt well supported by their peers and were able to access their supervisor and members of the leadership team easily whenever required.

The service supported clients to lead healthier lives by incorporating advice and guidance into their treatment. This included areas such as healthy eating, relapse prevention, maintaining safety, and harm minimisation strategies.

Staff used recognised outcome measures to assess and record the severity of clients’ conditions, as well as to evaluate care and treatment outcomes. Measures included the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS), the PSYCHLOPS questionnaire, and the CORE-OM and CORE-10 tools.

The service had identified opportunities to improve completion rates of these measures and had introduced initiatives to encourage both clients and staff to complete them more consistently. The data collected was used to monitor the effectiveness of treatment and support recovery.

Outcome data was shared publicly on the service’s website to promote transparency. Available data demonstrated improvements in reported wellbeing and quality of life, alongside reductions in psychological distress and the severity of presenting problems.

Staff demonstrated a good understanding of the importance of outcome measures and described how they incorporated these into practice in a way that did not detract from the quality of therapeutic sessions.

Staff used technology to support clients access and care. For example, prompt access to the service, communication and improved prescription times.

All clients were required to provide informed consent before starting treatment and were given clear information about the services and treatments available. Records of consent were appropriately stored within electronic patient records.

Staff took all practical steps to support clients in making their own decisions. Where there were queries about a client’s mental capacity, staff assessed and documented capacity to consent in line with relevant guidance.

Records confirmed that staff clearly documented clients’ preferences about the sharing of information with other organisations involved in their care and treatment.

The service’s registration process included clearly outlined terms and conditions relating to treatment and cancellation policies, ensuring transparency for clients from the outset.