Care Quality Commission community mental health survey 2021 results (12 May 2022)

Summary

This survey conducted by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) explored the experiences of people who used community mental health services between September and November 2020. The results show that people are consistently reporting poor experiences of NHS community mental health services, with few positive results. Many people reported that their mental health had deteriorated as a result of changes made to their care and treatment due to the pandemic. Analysis also showed disparities in the experiences of people with different mental health diagnoses, and in the experience of people using different methods to access care, such as telephone consultations.

On this webpage you can also access a benchmark report for each NHS trust, which provides detail of the survey methodology, headline results, the trust score for each evaluative question and banding for how a trust score compares with all other trusts.

Content

Key findings

Positive results

• Of those who have been told who is in charge of organising their care, 96% said that they knew how to contact this person.
• 90% said the person organised their care quite well or very well.
• There was a statistically significant improvement since 2019 in the percentage of people who have had the possible side effects and purpose of their medicines discussed with them.

Areas for improvement

Accessing care

• Two in five people (42%) thought the waiting time for their NHS talking therapies was too long.
• Only 41% of people have ‘definitely’ seen services enough for their needs.
• Almost 1 in 5 (17%) reported care and services were not available when they needed them in the last 12 months.
• Two in five people (44%) were not given enough time discuss their needs.

Crisis care

• Over a quarter of people (26%) would not know who to contact out of office hours in the NHS if they had a crisis.
• Almost a quarter (23%) of people did not get the help they needed or could not contact crisis care services.

Involvement

• Only half (52%) of people were involved as much as they wanted to be in planning their care.
• Only 41% of people said they ‘definitely’ agreed what care they would receive with someone from NHS community mental health services.
• Only half of people (50%) were involved as much as they wanted to be in deciding which therapies to use.