Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust

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• Overview
• Person-centred Care
• Care provision, Integration and continuity
• Providing Information
• Listening to and involving people
• Equity in access
• Equity in experiences and outcomes
• Planning for the future

This means we looked for evidence that the service met people’s needs.

At our last inspection we rated this key question as good. At this inspection the rating has remained good.

The service had made improvements with their response times, although not consistently. The service met the needs of people, and care and treatment plans were completed in collaboration with people who used the service. Staff helped people with communication and provided person-centred care. The service treated concerns and complaints seriously, investigated them and learned lessons from the result. However, they did not always answer the telephone to people promptly.

This service scored 71 (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 made sure people were at the centre of their care and treatment choices and they decided, in partnership with people, how to respond to any relevant changes in people’s needs.

The crisis resolution and home treatment teams met the needs of the people who used their service. Care and treatment plans were completed in collaboration with people who used the service following a comprehensive, holistic assessment. Relatives and carers were able to input into care plans when the person who used the service consented.

Staff were aware of people’s individual needs and preferences and could adapt care and treatment around them, for example visiting at specific times of the day, or meeting within the community rather than at home. Staff helped people with their social issues, such as homelessness and access to other services, including physical health care.

Whilst we were on site, we observed staff changing visits times when people asked them too, or the location where they would be visited. They checked the person was safe before doing so.

The service understood the diverse health and care needs of people and their local communities, so care was joined-up, flexible or supportive of choice and continuity.

Staff worked in partnership with third sector organisations which provided support to people whose mental health may be deteriorating or required extra support with a view to preventing a crisis.

When people were open to other teams, staff worked closely with those staff to ensure continuity of care wherever possible. This included teams internal to the trust such as community mental health teams and external services.

Staff provided carers with information and signposted them to online resources which could provide support and education about specific health conditions.

Staff ensured that families and carers had opportunities to be involved in the care and treatment of the people who used their services, with their consent. Carers and families we spoke with said they felt involved and informed about their loved one’s care and treatment. A carers lead liaised with carers and signposted them to other agencies, such as the local authority for a carer’s assessment. The service referred to third party providers to provide additional support such as advice, guidance and signposting for unpaid carers when required.

Staff supported people to maintain contact with their families and carers. In the HBPoS, staff ensured patients contacted their families if they needed to.

Staff told us they could access religious texts if required so patients’ spiritual needs were met. They said additional items could be sought from the adjacent inpatient wards.

The service supplied appropriate, accurate and up-to-date information in formats that were tailored to individual needs.

Staff made notifications to external bodies about statutory and notifiable patient safety incidents, such as the CQC and local Integrated Care Board whenever required.

Information governance systems included confidentiality of care records. Staff received information governance and data security training.

The service complied with the Accessible Information Standard. The trust website provided speech, reading and translation support. This could be translated in other languages and texts could be made larger. Information and leaflets provided could be produced in a form accessible to people’s individual needs and were available in other languages. People who were deaf could access the NHS 111 option 2 phone line using a British Sign Language (BSL) video interpreter. This was available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Staff told us they had easy access to interpreters and signers.

Staff ensured that people could obtain information on treatments, local services, how to complain and or provide feedback on the service. The service gave people information leaflets about medicines. The leaflets were easy to understand and advised people on side effects to look out for and how to respond to them, including when to seek emergency medical attention. People we spoke with told us they received all the information they needed, and staff explained their care to them, so they understood.

A carers information booklet was available on the trust website which provided information about the team, carers resources and useful contacts and numbers. Staff also offered team information booklets at visits.

The service made it easy for people to share feedback and ideas, or raise complaints about their care, treatment and support. They involved people in decisions about their care and told them what had changed as a result.

Between 18 March 2025 and 17 March 2026 there had been 25 complaints, of which 10 were formal and 15 informal. In the same time period, there had been 23 compliments. None had been upheld by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. Managers told us there had not been any themes or trends identified and no specific actions. Staff received feedback on the outcome of investigation of complaints in team meetings and acted on the findings. Complaints were monitored within clinical governance meetings.

People we spoke with said they knew how to complain or raise concerns but they had not needed to. Staff told us they knew how to handle complaints appropriately and ensured the person received feedback.

People who used services and carers had opportunities to give feedback on the service they received in a manner that reflected their individual needs. For example, people could complete surveys and questionnaires using weblinks, QR codes and leaflets were provided in written form and in multiple languages. Staff provided information to people who had used services, their carers and families about the Friends and Family Test and encouraged them to provide feedback. The feedback helped staff review the service they offered. Actions were in place following results from the latest NHS 111 option 2 mental health support survey from June 2024 to July 2025 which included ensuring staff were appropriately trained, supervised and supported.

In 2024 the NHS Patient Survey Programme, delivered by CQC on behalf of NHS England, asked NHS trusts to complete a community mental health survey. The subsequent steering group produced an action plan to make improvements on the feedback received, in conjunction with a person with lived experience. Actions that were relevant for the crisis resolution and home treatment team included reducing the number of times people repeated their mental health story. Staff told us about this when we on site and described ways in which they had made improvements such as not re-assessing known people from other trust services and limiting the amount of different staff people saw.

Managers and staff had access to the feedback from people who used services, carers and staff, and used it to make improvements. People who used services and carers could attend various trust wide and divisional forums such as the Patient and Carer Experience Forum which was held every 4 months.

People who used services and carers were actively involved in decision-making about changes to the service. The trust had a co-production and lived experience lead who ensured people’s voices were heard. For example, people from the Patient and Carer Experience Forum provided input into the Mental Health Front Door project and co-production leads were represented at monthly project group meetings. The Patient and Carer Experience Forum promoted co-production on policy and strategies such as the Quality Improvement Strategy, and quality initiatives or research. At the time of our inspection, the trust was advertising a drop in event for people to join them to help strengthen collaboration between the trust and the community. The service planned to run co-production focus groups with people who had used services.

The trust had developed the Patient and Carer Experience Five Year Forward Plan (2023 to 2028) which set out goals and objectives for the future regarding co-production, increasing input into services by people with lived experience and improved feedback and engagement.

Not all telephone calls were answered promptly however, the service had made improvements so people could access the care, support and treatment they needed when they needed it, although not consistently.

The service did not always meet the national standard of 4-hours for very urgent referrals through to assessment, although improvements had been made. From March 2025 to February 2026, average compliance for the service was 60%. Compliance had varied throughout the year. From March 2025 to August 2025, average compliance was 53%; from September 2025 to February 2026 average compliance was 67%.

The service had also made improvements for 24-hour urgent response achievement times. From March 2025 to February 2026, average compliance was 58% but compliance had improved from September 2025 to February 2026 to 66%. In February 2026 the service had achieved 100% compliance for very urgent referrals and 91% for urgent referrals. Senior managers told us there had been a focus to make improvements with the response time and they had improved previous data quality issues to ensure they had the correct information.

The crisis resolution and home treatment service was available 24-hours a day and was accessed through various contact points including the NHS 111 option 2 telephone service. There were dedicated referral or advice telephone lines for health professionals and emergency services. People who were on the caseload had a different line, answered by a member of the crisis team. One person who had used the service told us staff were quicker at answering the telephone, compared to a couple of years ago. There were no waiting lists for the crisis resolution and home treatment team.

Not all calls received came through the NHS 111 option 2 service. Between July 2025 and March 2026, average monthly calls for the NHS 111 option 2 phoneline were 394, which averaged out to 12 or 13 calls each day. Staff completed monthly audits of the NHS 111 option 2 phoneline by listening to recorded calls and providing feedback to staff when required.

Between March 2025 and February 2026, the service received 21134 calls to the trust’s adult mental health lines. Of these, 16485 calls were answered and 4649 were dropped which equated to 22% of all calls. The average time to answer calls was 99 seconds. NHS England monitor NHS 111 calls and have a national target that 95% of all calls should be answered within 60 seconds, which the trust had not met. However, the trust’s data we received did not separate out which telephone line these calls had been received through so not all these calls may have been answered by the crisis resolution team. Some staff told us the NHS 111 option 2 line was not always allocated to a named clinician and would be answered by whoever was available. However, people we spoke with said their calls had been answered quickly when they contacted the team.

A quality improvement project called the Mental Health Front Door planned to align all current telephone routes to one single point of access for mental health services through the NHS 111 option 2 route. One of the main aims of the project was to reduce waiting times for callers by enhancing the current system and improving access to the service. Managers told us they planned for the new service to be operational later this year.

Staff planned for peoples’ discharge, including good liaison with co-ordinators or other teams. At the time of our inspection, care record audits showed discharge planning was recorded 98% of the time. We looked at 6 people’s care records to specifically review discharge arrangements from the team. We saw that staff liaised with other teams and services and discharge plans were discussed with people and agreed. Discharge procedures with other care professionals varied between attending joint visits or telephone liaison. Staff told us they were not required to produce a discharge summary to the person’s GP due to the shared electronic care record system, unless there was a change or commencement of a medicine.

Managers and staff told us that the liaison meeting between the crisis service and the Hull City CMHT had improved delayed discharge and helped reduce their caseload. It had recently been put in place due to challenges with the CMHT accepting referrals from the crisis team. We attended and observed the meeting and found it to be well managed and productive.

Staff and leaders actively listened to information about people who are most likely to experience inequality in experience or outcomes and tailored their care, support and treatment in response to this.

Staff within the service and the wider organisation promoted a culture in which the people using the service felt empowered to give their views. There were people and carer forums, surveys and regular communications with people and carers. People and carers views were sought and people with lived experience were involved in various workstreams which stemmed from the Patient and Carer Experience Forum.

Staff were trained in equality, diversity, inclusion and human rights. At the time of our inspection, 96% of staff were compliant. Staff received training in learning disabilities and autism and were 99% compliant at the time of our inspection.

The trust supported the NHS Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework (PCREF) which is a mandatory anti-racism framework designed to reduce racial inequalities in services and support NHS trust’s to become actively anti-racist. Various workstreams across the trust were in place which aligned to the PCREF such as Act Against Racism, the Culture of Care programme and the NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES). The trust had an executive PCREF lead at board level who was accountable for its delivery and who had oversight.

The trust had undertaken equality impact assessments of their policies and procedures to ensure they did not place vulnerable people or people with protected characteristics at a disadvantage. We reviewed a range of policies and procedures, and each had an accompanying equality impact assessment. Managers monitored equality, diversity and inclusion within the team. In the crisis resolution and home treatment team, nearly 12% of the staff considered themselves to have a disability and less than 2% were from a Black or Minority Ethnic origin. Over 6% identified as LGBTQ+.

The trust continuously monitored how it addressed health inequalities and regularly presented findings to the board. The trust strategy 2023 to 2028 stated they were committed to tackling health inequalities and the more detailed Health Inequalities Plan for 2025 to 2028 set out how they would do this.

The trust set out their 4 Equality, Diversity and Inclusion priorities for people who use services and carers which had been co-produced as a ‘You said, We did’ plan. These included strengthening demographic data collection, enhancing inclusivity of people from all faiths, building relationships with people from diverse communities and educating and supporting people to understand cultural differences.

People were supported to plan for important life changes, so they could have enough time to make informed decisions about their future.

Staff supported people to make informed choices about their care and plan their future care and treatment. Staff created personalised care plans for people who used services, and accounted for their needs, wishes and feelings. Care plans we reviewed showed this.

People told us the service helped them plan what to do if their condition deteriorated and ensured they had contact details to use if this happened.

Staff ensured all relevant healthcare professionals and other relevant bodies were involved in planning the care and treatment of people with complex needs. Staff were able to refer to other teams and services if appropriate, such as drug and alcohol or physical healthcare services. We saw within care records that staff liaised with other teams for safe transfer of care at discharge. Staff arranged joint visits with care co-ordinators or support workers when required, to ensure continuity of care.