Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust

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• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

This means we looked for evidence that the service involved people and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.

At our last assessment we rated this key question Good. At this assessment the rating has remained Good.

Good: This meant people were supported and treated with dignity and respect; and involved as partners in their care.

This service scored 70 (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 always treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff treated colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

Staff attitudes and behaviours when interacting with young people showed that they were discreet, respectful and responsive, providing young people with help, emotional support and advice at the time they needed it. We observed staff being respectful of young people’s needs and encouraging them to participate in activities and the assessment process.

Staff supported young people to understand and manage their care, treatment or condition. Young people were fully involved in the assessment process, and they were asked if they wanted their parents to be involved in the process too.

Staff directed young people to other services when appropriate and, if required, supported them to access those services. We saw examples of where young people did not meet the eligibility criteria for the service for young people with an eating disorder, however still required mental health support, and these young people were referred to the CAMHS community team.

Young people said staff treated them well and behaved appropriately towards them.

Staff understood the individual needs of young people, including their personal, cultural, social and religious needs.

Staff maintained the confidentiality of information about young people. Care records were electronic and staff had an individual login to access the care records. Staff offices were not in parts of the building where young people accessed.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They took account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

The service made adjustments for disabled young people – for example, by ensuring disabled people’s access to premises and by meeting young peoples’ specific communication needs. All teams we visited were accessible to people with mobility needs, as they were either on the ground floor or had lift access.

Staff ensured that young people could obtain information on treatments, local services, patients’ rights, how to complain and so on. There were welcome booklets in some of the teams but not all of them. Waiting areas had a variety of information about the service, in Bolton CAMHS there were all about me summaries of the staff team, including photographs so that young people knew a little bit more about the people they were going to have an appointment with.

The information provided was in a form accessible to the young people using the service. The mental health support team information including photographs of the staff working for the service. The Wigan Building Attachments and Bonds service leaflet included photographs of the rooms where the groups took place. This would help people know what to expect.

However, the other services did not have accessible information for young people and their families to review prior to their appointment to help them understand what to expect.

Staff made information leaflets available in languages spoken by young people accessing the service. In each of the leaflets, the advice was to contact the provider if you required information in different languages.

Managers ensured that staff and young people had easy access to interpreters and/or signers. We saw that interpreters had been booked for appointments.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service promoted people’s independence, so people knew their rights and had choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

There was a young people’s participation group where young people could become involved with job adverts, interviews, and décor of the buildings.

There was a participation worker who had recently been employed at the service. They were supporting young people to be involved in interviewing new staff, and developing training to deliver in schools

Young people had regular reviews with their clinical team. We saw an example where a young person did not want to attend their meeting at Junction 17 day service, however their views were represented by family members.

Therapies and interventions provided by the teams, had the shared goal of enabling young people to develop skills and strategies to deal with difficult situations, thoughts and feelings.

We scored the service as 2. The evidence showed some shortfalls. The service did not always listen to and understand people’s needs, views and wishes. Staff did not always respond to people’s needs in the moment or act to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress.

We reviewed 17 risk assessments during the assessment. Staff were not always aware of, and dealt with, specific risk issues, or care planned for these accordingly.

At Wigan CAMHS, of 5 care records reviewed, 2 did not have a risk assessment completed, another 2 risk assessments were not completed in full and there was no evidence of the risk assessments being reviewed. At the Junction 17 Day service, in all the 4 records reviewed, the clinical Risk Assessments and safety plans were not clear about what staff needed to do to manage the risk. This meant young people were not regularly involved in the review of their risk assessments.

Staff did not always identify and respond to changing risks to, or posed by, young people. Staff did not always involve young people in care planning and risk assessment. At Bolton CAMHS, in the care records we reviewed, the risk assessments had not been recently reviewed; 1 was last reviewed in 2022, 1 in 2023 and another in 2025. At the Children and Young People’s Eating Disorder Service, 1 of the risk assessments we reviewed was last reviewed in 2024.

Due to the waiting times for the CAMHS Community teams at Wigan and Bolton, young people were waiting to access the service. This meant the service were not able to be responsive to new referrals.

Parents told us that due to sickness within Bolton CAMHS, at times their child’s appointment was cancelled, or they had to get to know new workers due to staffing challenges. However, we did see at Children and Young People’s Eating Disorder Service for Wigan and Bolton that when a staff member was ill, other staff covered the appointments. This meant the appointment still went ahead for the young person.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff and supported and enabled staff to always deliver person-centred care.

Staff felt respected, supported and valued. Staff enjoyed their roles and valued the opportunity to take the lead in certain areas, for example at Wigan CAMHS there was a practitioner who took the lead with complaints and another practitioner who took the lead in safeguarding.

Staff felt positive and proud about working for the provider and their team. Staff spoke with pride and warmth about their role and the team they worked in.

Staff had access to support for their own physical and emotional health needs through an occupational health service.

Staff appraisals included conversations about career development and how it could be supported. Some staff we spoke to had started working at the Trust as a support worker, completed their professional training, continued working at the Trust and progressed into managerial roles.