Community Mental Health Survey

We will soon be carrying out a survey to understand what you think about your care.

This is a national survey and last year we heard the views of nearly 15,000 people. The results are crucial to improving the quality of care and people’s mental health care experiences.

Participation is voluntary and all answers are confidential.

If you do not wish to take part, it will not affect the care you receive from the NHS. You can decide not to take part, or if you do not want to answer some of the questions, you can do so without giving a reason.
 

If you do not wish to take part, or for your details to be shared with researchers so you can be sent a questionnaire, or if you have any questions then please let us know by the end of May using the contact details below.

You may be sent a letter inviting you to take part in this important survey in a few months’ time because you have used community mental health services recently. 

If you are invited to take part, your name, phone number, and postal address will only be used by researchers to carry out the survey. Your information will not be shared with anyone else, and all published data is anonymised.

The survey is being carried out by researchers from this NHS Trust, the Care Quality Commission and the Survey Coordination centre at Picker.

The results will be published on CQC’s website when they are available.

View the results from previous surveys.

The information you give us will be held securely and will be treated in strict confidence in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation. Personal data about your involvement in this survey is not used for any other purpose and is deleted once the survey process is complete. Your answers to the survey are not linked to your name or full address, but researchers analysing the results of the survey will use your postcode to undertake geographical analysis of overall results.

We acknowledge the findings of the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) latest Community Mental Health Survey benchmarking report.

The survey provides an insight into the experiences of people using community mental health services across the country.

Our results are based on feedback from 878 service users, reflecting an 18% response rate from a sample of 5,000 individuals.

We performed similarly to other Trusts in 33 areas, with noted improvements in how feedback is gathered and how teams consider broader aspects of people’s lives.

Areas identified for improvement include access to crisis care and experiences of being treated with dignity and respect. The Trust was not identified as an outlier in any category.

Summary of results

  • SPFT performed about the same as other Trusts in 33 areas, including overall care and communication
  • The Trust performed somewhat worse than other Trusts in one key area: being treated with dignity and respect
  • SPFT performed worse than other Trusts in access to crisis care, which remains a top priority for improvement
  • The Trust saw improvements in two areas compared to last year:
    • More people said they were asked for feedback through channels other than the survey
    • More respondents felt their NHS team considered other aspects of their life, beyond just mental health.

View the survey results here 

Trust developments

We have recently launched Our organisational strategy which was developed in partnership with people who use our services, our staff and our partner organisations. Our new strategy sets out a vision of how we will deliver high quality, specialist NHS mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity services for patients, families and carers.

We have teamed up with the national text messaging service Shout to deliver an enhanced digital service to support people who need help with their mental health. People who use the keyword (Text SUSSEX to 85258) will be connected to a qualified mental health professional who can offer text-based crisis intervention, emotional support, signposting to appropriate services, safety planning and risk formulation. Text SUSSEX to 85258' is an all-age 24/7 messaging service which offers real-time support to people who need help with their mental health. Since Sussex Partnership first partnered with Shout in July 2022, more than 1800 people have used the keyword (Text SUSSEX). The top three reasons that people are using the service for are low mood and sadness, suicide and stress or worry.

If you have any questions or comments about the survey, please contact the Participation Team: