Derbyshire Healthcare 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

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

Good: This meant people’s needs were met through good organisation and delivery. Staff delivered person-centred care. Staff supported patients with activities outside the service, such as work, education, and family relationships. The service recognised the needs of people who used services, including those with a protected characteristic. The service treated concerns and complaints seriously, investigated them and learned lessons from the result. The service actively sought feedback from people, their families, and carers.

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.

During our observations of appointments and various meetings, staff and managers consistently demonstrated the importance of care being relevant to the people who they cared for. We observed complex care meetings where joint referrals and visits were discussed for people with additional needs such as a learning disability.

Staff arranged appointments when they were convenient to people who used the service. Staff made calls to people before appointments to confirm their availability and rearranged them when people called in to request to be seen earlier or later due to a change in their circumstances.

Care plans and risk assessments were person-centred. They had direct quotes from people who used the service and identified each person’s risk, management and treatment plans. Care plans included goal setting such as learning to drive. Where appropriate, they included feedback from carers and family members such as behaviours and words for staff to avoid that could potentially escalate the behaviour of the person who used the service.

People were empowered to make decisions about their own care and treatment. Care plans included referrals to services aimed at supporting physical wellbeing; however, the individual declined to engage.

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.

The trust had a 2-star accreditation for Triangle of Care. This is an initiative managed by the Carers Trust which supports care providers to understand, support and value the role carers have in being part of someone’s care team. The trust submitted their latest annual reports to the Carers Trust for review in December 2025. The quarterly Patient and Carer Experience Operational Group is chaired by the trust’s deputy director. Improved actions included a 6-week interim meeting to monitor agreed actions to avoid delays. The Patient and Carer Experience Operational Group presented an update to the trust board in September 2025 and included feedback from a carer about their experience.

The community mental health service had a strong focus on co-production with people who used services, their carers and families. Trust-wide equality forum meetings were held each month and were attended by family members, carers, and people with lived experience from a wide range of services alongside staff and senior managers. Senior managers reported findings to the trust board and identified areas of improvement such as inconsistency across services.

The trust updated their co-production work plan in October 2025 and included several actions to improve how the voice of people with lived experience could be heard. Examples of actions included improvements to staff training and establishment of local co-production champions.

Staff supported people to attend various groups within their communities. These included groups for people with autism and neurodivergence. Activity groups included gardening, carers drop-in groups, creative arts and sleep hygiene.

The service’s occupational therapy (OT) staff were well embedded into multi-disciplinary teams. They facilitated recovery groups where people had a safe space to share their experiences. People who attended built their own relationships after attending the group and improved their wellbeing by joining a local gym and built new friendships.

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

The service complied with the Accessible Information Standard. For example, the trust website had text-to-speech available in 100 languages with 65 voice options. The trust website provided free access for anyone to create their own easy-read documents. The Accessible Information Standard tells organisations how they should make sure that disabled patients receive information in formats that they can understand and receive appropriate support to help them to communicate.

Staff gave examples of how leaflets had been provided to people in their first language and said British Sign Language interpreters were available.

Staff across all teams said how care plans and other documents were translated into other languages, but some staff said it was difficult to access interpreter services, particularly face to face. Staff said they raised an incident if this occurred as it had resulted in a missed appointment or a potential delay in treatment.

We saw posters in waiting rooms and clinical areas with different languages available.

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.

The service enabled people who used services, their family and carers to provide feedback about their experience. Methods of providing feedback included direct verbal feedback to staff, social media platforms, written correspondence and Friends and Family Test responses. Feedback was also possible by making formal complaints, either directly to the service or through the trust Patient and Liaison Service (PALS).

In the 12 months before our inspection, the adult community mental health service received 173 complaints, 11 complaints were upheld by the service. We received information about 5 complaints and themes ranged from accessibility of staff to non-allocation to a care co-ordinator.

In January 2026, the adult community mental health service received 481 compliments. We reviewed information from the 5 most recent compliments which included very positive interactions with clinical staff and included ‘Just wanted to say thank you for helping me in my lowest of lows’.

Between February 2025 and January 2026 there were no complaints made to or upheld by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) in relation to the adult community mental health service.

We spoke to 16 people who used services and 7 carers. Most people knew how to make a complaint. Out of the 23 people we spoke to, none of them felt the need to make a complaint.

Staff and managers were aware of the complaints procedure and saw it as an opportunity to make improvements. One complaint resulted in allocation of a Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) to someone following discharge from hospital to improve continuity of care.

The service did not always make sure that people could access the care, support and treatment they needed when they needed it. However, people received information on how to receive help if they needed it.

Data provided by the trust confirmed people were waiting significantly longer for their first appointments at Erewash CMHT and Amber Valley CMHT when compared to the trust target. The service had a high number of people who had not been seen by a member of staff in over a year.

The trust provided data for people who were discharged from inpatient wards and needed follow up contact from the adult community mental health service within 72 hours of discharge. Against a target of 80%, monthly compliance ranged from 87% to 94% between January 25 to January 2026. We did not receive data set out by team. Staff and managers said everyone received a follow up after being discharged.

However, staff said they were aware of health inequalities, particularly of people with physical health concerns in addition to a mental health illness. Staff spoke about finding other ways to make sure all people were able to access groups that they would be interested in, such as use of pool cars.

We spoke to 16 people who used services and 7 carers. Most people told us there was no waiting list, or that they had experienced a short waiting time for assessment and support.

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

The trust’s updated strategy from 2024 to 2028 included health inequalities as a specific area to focus on. Alongside this, the strategy included plans to work with the local primary care trust to align services for people with a learning disability and or neurodevelopmental needs. Priorities of the strategy included equality, diversity and inclusion objectives for all trust board members and implementation of the Patient and Carer Race Equality framework (PCREF).

The trust updated their PCREF framework in October 2025. PCREF is a national framework which aims to reduce the racial inequalities often seen in mental health. A PCREF update was provided to the trust board in January 2026 and actions included completion of a PCREF self-assessment by the end of March 2026.

In 2025, the trust implemented its Community and Stakeholder Engagement Plan, to support delivery of the trust’s updated overall strategy. It proposed improved engagement with local communities to improve access, experience and outcomes of people who used the service. A priority group for initial engagement was identified as people from deaf and black communities. The Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism Delivery Board recognised that less than 0.2% of the trust’s patient group use British Sign Language, yet the Derby area has the largest deaf community outside of London.

Staff were trained in equality and diversity. All the adult community mental health services teams were above 85% compliance, with most teams at 100%.

Managers said they completed monthly care record audits which focused on demographic data to identify and highlight potential inequalities. Senior managers said health inequalities would be identified by improved use of data, particularly where people need support with mental health and substance misuse services.

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

Our review of care records identified that advance decisions had been recorded in up-to-date care plans, which included actions for staff to take with family members or their pets.

People’s advanced decisions included medication preferences if they were admitted to hospital or lost capacity to make decisions. Some people said they did not want to be admitted to hospital.

People who used services told us that they were involved in decisions about their care, such as joint referrals for their physical and mental health. Some people said they were involved in discharge from the service to their GP and still had support through NHS 111 Option 2 mental health crisis line if they needed it.