- SERVICE PROVIDER
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
This is an organisation that runs the health and social care services we inspect
Assessment report published 12 March 2026
Contents
Ratings - Community-based mental health services for adults of working age
Our view of the service
We carried out an inspection of the trust’s community-based mental health services for adults of working age on 2 to 4 September 2025. The community-based mental health services for adults of working age form part of the trust’s mental health services in the community. This inspection was completed as part of CQC's Adult Community Mental Health Programme. We also inspected mental health crisis services and health-based places of safety as part of the programme. The programme of inspections contributes to CQC's commitment to inspect the standard of care in community mental health services across the country. We undertook a short-notice announced, comprehensive inspection of this service, looking at all 5 key questions to assess if services are safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare Foundation NHS Trust is part of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care System (ICS). The population of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICS area is over 2 million, with significant health inequalities across different local authorities. There are 4 local authorities, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton. There is a higher proportion of white people, compared to the England average across 3 out of the 4 local authority areas. Southampton has a higher proportion of Asian and Asian British people and mixed or multiple ethnicity people, when compared to England. Southampton and Portsmouth are the most deprived local authorities; deprivation is linked with poorer health outcomes. Southampton and Isle of Wight have poorer health index scores, higher suicide rates in males, and higher emergency admissions for intentional self-harm in females than the national average. Suicide rates are significantly higher for males in Isle of Wight and Southampton; female suicide rates are also above national averages in Hampshire, Southampton, and Portsmouth. Emergency hospital admissions for self-harm are significantly higher across all 4 local authorities compared to national figures.
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust was created on 1 October 2024 through the merger of two NHS trusts (Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust and Solent NHS Trust), alongside service transfers from 2 other trusts (Isle of Wight NHS Trust and Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust). This is the first inspection of community-based mental health services for adults of working age since the merger. As part of our inspection, we considered information and data provided by the trust for activity within the last 12 months. Some of this related to legacy organisations, as it was not yet available in the trust’s current format.
The trust’s community-based mental health services for adults of working age are spread across 4 geographic divisions:
- Mid and North Hampshire
- Portsmouth and South East Hampshire
- Southampton and South West Hampshire
- Isle of Wight
The trust had 3 communities of practice, which included 1 for working age adults. The communities of practice were designed to ensure the clinical divisions worked together to deliver clinical transformation and improvement and to ensure consistent standards. The way in which services were organised and delivered varied across the 4 divisions and across different teams. This included differences in governance systems.
During the inspection we:
- visited the early intervention teams at Isle of Wight and South West Hampshire, community mental health teams at Isle of Wight Central and West, Eastleigh, Southampton Central, Gosport, Portsmouth, Winchester, Andover, Rivers and Meadows. We visited the Access to Intervention team on the Isle of Wight and Assessment to Intervention team in Portsmouth.
- the medicines team visited 6 sites, where community mental health services for adults of working age were based
- spoke with 153 staff of various grades and roles, and carried out 2 focus groups
- interviewed the leadership team in each division,
- spoke with 40 people who used services and 2 carers,
- reviewed 79 care records for people who used services and 33 medicines administration records
At this inspection we rated the service as requires improvement. We rated safe, effective, responsive and well-led as requires improvement. We rated caring as good. We found 9 breaches of regulation relating to:
- waiting list management, including the monitoring of people waiting for services
- not meeting targets for contacting people within 72 hours of discharge from an inpatient ward
- the deployment of sufficient staff, who had completed mandatory training and received supervision and appraisal
- ensuring people received physical health checks
- ensuring people had current, person-centred care plans
- reading people their rights under section 132 of the Mental Health Act
- assessing non-urgent referrals within 28 days
- long waiting times for psychological therapies
- good governance
We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this inspection.
People's experience of this service
In September 2025 Healthwatch Southampton published its report ‘Exploration into Community Mental Health Teams in Southampton’. This focused particularly on changes made to the model of care in East Southampton Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs) and heard from 38 people who used services. People told Healthwatch there were long waits for psychological therapies, and they had concerns about access to crisis support and the complaints procedure. Some people reported negative experiences with staff. People did not fully understand the eligibility criteria for teams and felt they often did not meet the criteria for support.
During our inspection we spoke to 40 people who used services and 2 carers. Feedback from people was mixed with people commenting positively about support received from peer support workers. Peer support workers are people who use their lived experience of mental health problems to support others. Some people gave positive feedback about staff attitudes and behaviours and the level of support received from services. However, some people raised concerns about the attitude of some professionals and poor communication. They were particularly impacted by long waits for therapy and other services on the Isle of Wight and commented about a lack of communication whilst waiting.
Feedback from the 2 carers we spoke with was positive. One carer said ‘they came into a difficult situation, they were very professional, took our concerns on board. They are very caring. They protected (family member) from the wider community with dignity.’