Increasing Quality Years

Supported by Annual Delivery Plan 1: Delivering Great Care 

Delivering great care

Improving the quality, safety and experience of care remained a priority in 2025/26. We focused on improving access, reducing delays, strengthening care planning and helping people receive the right care, at the right time, in the least restrictive setting possible. We also continued work to reduce inequalities in access, experience and outcomes across our services.

Improving quality and safety

Improving quality and safety remains central to delivering great care. Further detail on our priorities and achievements is included in our Quality Account.

We strengthened incident reporting and review processes, improved how learning is shared across teams and continued work to reduce restrictive practice and promote least restrictive care. We also expanded approaches including cultural safety planning and peer-led debriefs, helping improve patient engagement, reduce conflict and support safer care.

While progress has been made, ensuring consistently safe care across all services remains a priority. It is important to recognise those who have experienced harm while receiving our care.

Lived experience involvement and co-production

Patients, carers and people with lived experience continued to shape service improvement through co-production.

• In the last six months, 146 Lived Experience Members contributed more than 2,300 hours of involvement activity, including supporting Cultural Capability Training, crisis pathway redesign and patient experience work.
• Peer support is now embedded across acute and community services.
• Carer peer support is available across all five boroughs, with 102 carers registered with our involvement network.
• Our 66 volunteers contributed 5,495 hours during the year, representing an estimated social value of around £80,000. 

Improving patient experience

Listening to feedback from patients, carers and families remains an important part of improving care. During the year, we received more than 56,000 Feedback Live responses, with 84% of respondents reporting a positive experience.

Our Patient Advice and Liaison Service handled 1,183 contacts, while fewer concerns escalated to formal complaints, reflecting continued progress in resolving issues earlier.

We received 270 complaints and 474 compliments recognising the care, compassion and professionalism shown by staff. Complaint handling performance improved significantly, with 99.2% of complaints acknowledged within three working days and 98.4% responded to within 25 working days.

The 2025 CQC Community Mental Health Survey showed patient experience was above the national average in a number of key areas. Overall experience scored 6.5 out of 10 compared with a national average of 5.9, with more patients reporting they were treated with respect and dignity.

However, we know experience is not equal for everyone. Black communities remained overrepresented in complaint data and had the highest proportion of upheld complaints. In response, we are developing targeted quality improvement work to better understand and address inequalities in patient experience.

Continuous improvement

We also continued strengthening a culture of continuous improvement through further development of our Quality Management System. Quality improvement approaches supported work to improve inpatient flow, reduce violence and aggression, improve access and engagement, and reduce racially motivated incidents.

Alongside this, we improved the quality and use of data, particularly ethnicity and health inequalities data, helping teams identify variation in access, experience and outcomes and target improvement work more effectively.

Strengthening care planning and continuous improvement

We continued to improve the consistency of care planning. Nearly 95% of eligible patients on the Care Programme Approach now have a personalised DIALOG+ care plan. Ultimately this will see more meaningful conversations and greater involvement in decisions about care. Inpatient services are progressing rollout across working age and older adult wards, with further plans to expand to those not on CPA. We aim for the majority of eligible patients to have a DIALOG+ plan by December 2026. We recognise that experiences of care planning are not yet consistent across all services. Our focus is to ensure care plans are meaningful, high quality and consistently support shared decision-making.

Improving access and flow through services

We made significant progress in improving how people access and move through services. Average length of stay reduced from 73 to 63 days, while readmissions reduced from 5.2% to 3.3%.

Improved discharge planning and closer coordination between inpatient and community teams helped more people receive care closer to home, particularly people who had experienced long hospital stays. Reductions in length of stay were especially noticeable for Black and Asian patients, who have historically experienced some of the longest stays.

We also reduced reliance on private sector beds, with usage falling from a peak of 41 beds to 18. Towards the end of the year, we began reconfiguring inpatient services at Springfield University Hospital to create Maple Ward, a short-stay intensive acute ward with an additional 18 beds.

Improving crisis care and urgent support

Too many people still experience long waits for mental health support or attend emergency departments because the right support is not available quickly enough. During the year, we worked with patients, carers, staff and partners to co-produce improvements to crisis care pathways.

This included focus groups, engagement with Healthwatch, discussions with GPs and a public survey that received more than 175 responses. Feedback highlighted concerns about access and joined-up care, but also showed many people felt listened to and involved in decisions about their care.

We continued strengthening crisis support by:

• expanding Home Treatment Teams to provide more support in people’s homes
• improving access to crisis support across all borough
• working with partners to reduce reliance on emergency departments.
   

We also secured support from the NHS England Mental Health Improvement Support Team to review the wider crisis pathway. This led to the establishment of a South West London Mental Health Urgent and Emergency Care Board and development of proposals for a co-located mental health emergency department.

Strengthening community and rehabilitation support

We strengthened support for people with the most complex mental health needs through a more intensive and assertive model of community care. This work focuses on improving engagement, reducing relapse and admission, and ensuring people are not discharged because they struggle to engage with services.

The programme has been shaped by learning from national reviews following the Nottingham incidents and reflects our wider commitment to reducing health inequalities and supporting people experiencing multiple disadvantage.

We also expanded our community rehabilitation service, supporting people with long or repeated admissions to move into less restrictive community settings and develop greater independence.

Know who to turn to

We launched Know who to turn to, a campaign and online directory designed to help people find mental health support quickly and easily. The campaign focused particularly on people underserved by services and promoted alternatives to A&E, including NHS 111. Information packs were distributed to 3,000 Mental Health First Aid-trained community members to improve awareness of local support and encourage earlier access to help.

Improving care for children and young people

Improving access, experience and outcomes for children and young people remained a priority. Services continued strengthening personalised care and shared decision-making with young people and families.

We continued implementing the Core CAMHS Offer to improve consistency across boroughs and strengthen pathways for children, young people and families. Children, young people and parent carers remained actively involved through advisory groups and transformation governance.

We also improved support for families waiting for care. Our Virtual Waiting Room now supports around 10,000 families with information and wellbeing resources while they wait for services. More than 60% of families accessed wellbeing content.

In October 2025, more than 1,300 young people and families waiting for Tier 2 services in Kingston and Richmond transferred into our services, improving coordination and creating a more joined-up pathway for care. Since transfer, nearly 300 young people have been referred for online therapy and more than 250 for online neurodevelopmental assessment.

Demand for neurodevelopmental assessments continues to rise. In response, we launched the Sutton Neurodevelopmental Needs One Stop Shop pilot with health, education, local authority and voluntary sector partners. The service provides drop-in support for children and young people aged 5–18 with possible neurodevelopmental needs, including autism and ADHD, without requiring referral or diagnosis.

We also expanded the Children and Young People Primary Care Network worker programme, improving earlier access to mental health support through GP practices and strengthening links between primary care and CAMHS.

Alongside this, we continue working with NHS England, Deaf young people, families and clinicians to help shape future models of specialist Deaf CAMHS support, recognising the increasing importance of community-based approaches.

Looking ahead

In 2026 — 2027, we will continue focusing on providing care closer to home, reducing restrictive interventions and helping people access support as early as possible, at the right time and in the right place. We will continue improving the quality and consistency of care through stronger quality improvement approaches and wider rollout of DIALOG+ care planning to support more meaningful involvement in decisions about care and treatment. We will also continue strengthening community and crisis services, alongside opening Maple Ward at Springfield University Hospital to support shorter, more therapeutic inpatient stays when hospital care is needed. For children and young people, we will continue improving earlier access to support, strengthening neurodevelopmental pathways and expanding community-based and digital approaches to care, helping more families receive timely support closer to home.