Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust

On this page

• 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 assessment we rated this key question requires improvement. At this assessment the rating has changed to good. This meant people’s needs were met through good organisation and delivery.

Staff managed referrals to services well. The recent implementation of the Getting Help team has been essential in ensuring people have better access to the most suitable services. Crisis assessments took place quickly and efficiently to ensure young people’s needs and risks were assessed. Young people were supported on discharge by the community CAMHS crisis team to help transition back into the community with increased support and staff told us caseloads were better managed than previous years. Young people were consistently supported to remain in the community to receive mental health support and teams provided support ensuring the least disruption to education and family relationships. The service met the needs of young people, including those with a protected characteristic. Staff helped patients with communication, advocacy and cultural and spiritual support. The service treated concerns and complaints seriously, investigated them and learned lessons from the results.
We spoke with service leaders who explained that they thoroughly considered needs during triage and assessment to enable staff to direct patients to other services when appropriate and, if required, supported them to access those services. This included when referrals came in indicating more specialised services would better meet the young person's needs. Daily discussions took place each morning in teams this took place.
 

This service scored 75 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. 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.

Staff ensured that young people’s appointments were tailored to them individually, including the time, setting and length of appointment. Staff demonstrated caring, person centred values when arranging appointments by listening to young people and their needs. This included the environment where young people were seen and who they were seen with, giving choice to be supported by parents where appropriate to do so. The feedback from young people was “the staff listened to me and respected me and my decisions”, “CAMHS crisis always spend a reasonable and satisfactory amount of time with you, make sure there’s enough time to get your thoughts and feelings across without feeling rushed, but also making sure you don’t feel overwhelmed by the length of time”. “Staff are eager to try their best to make a difference” and “my care has been influenced by me, they have really listened to me”. One person told us, “I noticed that staff go the extra mile and are really passionate". Care records also reflected the person-centred approach of services, with thought given to individual needs, including onwards referrals, the type of therapy offered and which staff were best suited to deliver care and treatment to specific individuals based on their need or preference.
 

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service understood the diverse health and care needs of people and their local communities, so care was joined-up, flexible and supported choice and continuity. Staff ensured that young people and their families were supported to attend appointments and that factors such as financial issues did not impede on young people’s ability to access care and treatment.

Staff ensured the most appropriate methods of communication that met people’s needs and situations were used, such as sending letters or appointment cards for people without access to phones or emails. This also ensured people could be seen at home where travel would be costly. Staff encouraged young people to integrate into the local community and had various links to community groups for both young people and their carers. Some services would signpost to groups where appropriate to help young people make connections within the local community based on their circumstances. Services worked closely with schools to ensure young people’s educational needs continued to be met in a way that was supportive to their mental health recovery.
 

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service supplied appropriate, accurate and up-to-date information in formats that were tailored to individual needs.
The service provided information about the service they provided to both young people and carers. They also provided information on treatments, local services and patient rights, including how people could make a complaint. The services all displayed previous inspection ratings within their buildings.

Staff made notifications to external bodies as needed and these were made in a timely manner and they made submissions to the local authority safeguarding team on a regular basis. The services had information governance systems which ensured confidentiality of patient records and they complied with the Accessible Information Standard. The service had access to translation services, the ability to access materials in different languages and could provide easy read information to support young people and their carers.
 

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. 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 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026, the Trust received 12 Local Issue Resolutions and 26 complaints relating to the community CAMHS services. Of the complaints received, 22 had concluded with an outcome recorded, and 4 remained under investigation and responded to within trust or national response times. The Trust had established a clear and proportionate approach to the management of concerns and complaints, aligned with the NHS complaints standards. Frontline staff were supported and empowered to resolve concerns promptly at local or team level through a Local Issue Resolution process. These matters were recorded separately from complaints to ensure appropriate visibility, monitoring, and organisational oversight.

Where concerns were not resolved locally, or where individuals wished to pursue the matter further, clear information was provided on how to escalate issues through the Trust’s formal complaints process. All complaints were managed through a structured and consistent pathway ensuring proportionality, timely responses, and appropriate senior oversight when required. All Local Issue Resolutions and Complaints were recorded electronically on the incident recording system, providing auditability and transparency. There were no significant themes or outliers identified within the complaints reviewed, with only 1 complaint fully upheld and actioned.

The complaints data demonstrated that people knew how to make complaints about services and the Trust complaints policy included guidance for staff about responding to complaints. Staff we spoke with knew how to handle complaints and support young people and their families to make complaints and documented this appropriately. Any learning from complaints or concerns was fed back to teams in either clinician supervision sessions or team meetings, where appropriate.
 

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service made sure that people could access the care, support and treatment they needed when they needed it.
Environments were suitable for wheelchair access and appointments took place on the ground floor of the buildings that we visited. Staff ensured the needs of patients with mobility issues were met. Staff made reasonable adjustments for patients including appointment times, location of appointments and ensured rooms were suitable in terms of sensory needs and comfort. There was adequate medical cover for the services and good communication between the teams regarding cover of doctors where needed.

Crisis team staff worked alongside inpatient CAMHS (delivered by other providers) to ensure smooth transitions between inpatient admissions and discharge back into the community. Staff planned for patients’ discharges well, including good liaison with other teams and involvement of young people and their families. Staff worked well to ensure young people remained in the community as the least restrictive option unless risks were unable to be managed safely. The services completed discharge summaries that included information about onwards referrals where appropriate and were written in a way that young people could understand.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. Staff and leaders actively listened to information about people who were most likely to experience inequality in experience or outcomes and tailored their care, support and treatment in response to this. The provider 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.

The Patient and Carer Experience Team also offered individual team support through the Patient Experience Quality Visit Programme. The visits provided support and a motivational approach in the collection of feedback. The team assisted clinical team to overcome any potential barriers to participation, increase response rates and to address any drop in quality scores. The visits also included practical advice on the process for gathering feedback, displaying the results effectively, implementing action plans and offering alternative actions, as well as sharing best practice.
The Trust had developed a framework that identified priority areas of service improvement from a patient and carer perspective. Each Care Group had an action plan that supported this work, and progress was reported through their governance structure. All teams were above target (85%) for Equality and Diversity Training.

The service also worked in line with the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework (PCREF) and specifically looked at access to service for children and young people and clinical outcomes. The Trust had area’s of focus including building awareness and understanding of inequalities across communities, improving access to and quality of data on inequalities, expanding a community engagement approach, diversifying lived experience engagement and responding to discrimination experienced by staff, patients and carers.
 

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. People were supported to plan for important life changes, so they could have enough time to make informed decisions about their future. Staff created personalised care plans to account for young people’s needs, wishes and feelings, including hopes for discharge and the future.

Staff ensured all relevant healthcare professionals and other relevant bodies were involved in planning the care and treatment of young people with complex needs by utilising a multi-disciplinary approach, involving the young person and their families. Staff encouraged young people to engage in sessions to help develop essential coping skills to enhance their wellbeing and future. Planning for the future included teachers, social workers, mental health professionals and external support where required. Care plans and discharge plans were informative to ensure needs were identified and plans were in place to offer the best support with the most appropriate services.