Improving the culture of care
The collective ambition across the mental health sector is for all services to foster a culture where everybody; patients and staff, can flourish. Staff, patients and families have articulated the need to ‘re-set’ the culture of mental health inpatient services.
To support this ambition, over 100 frontline staff, people with lived experience, families, carers, academics, system leaders, providers and other stakeholders have jointly developed the Culture of Care Standards. These standards articulate the culture of care the sector wants to achieve across inpatient services now and in the future.
Culture of care standards
The mental health sector has worked together to develop a collective vision for the culture of care we want across our inpatient services in the format of 12 core commitments and associated standards.
Culture of Care Improvement Programme
Frontline staff, providers, people with lived experience, families, and academics have identified barriers that can prevent the culture of care everyone wants to see from being realised. The culture change programme focuses on addressing these barriers by working alongside staff and people with lived experience, creating space for open and honest reflection to inform improvements.
We have learned from previous national improvement work in this sector that combining quality improvement methodology with staff care and development programmes can support teams in overcoming barriers and achieving culture change that is systematic, consistent, and sustainable.
The national culture change improvement programme launched in January 2024 and will run until March 2026. It provides tailored support to all 60 providers of NHS-commissioned mental health, learning disability, and autism inpatient services. For further details on specific elements of the programme, please follow the links below:
- Quality improvement coaching from ward to board
- Tailored work on personalised approaches to risk and safety planning
- Staff Care and Development Programme
- Ward Manager Leadership and Development Programme
- Culture of Care Improvement Programme: summary document for patients and families
The intended impact of the Culture Change Improvement Programme is improved patient experience (as measured by patient reported experience measures as well as a bespoke, lived experience designed patient experience tool), a reduction in restrictive practice and improved staff experience (measured through staff survey results) and other proxy measures related to culture as defined by staff and patients.
We know that achieving a supportive workplace culture has benefits for employee wellbeing, engagement and performance, staff retention and patient experience and outcomes.
Culture of care deliverables
- Ensure the purpose of inpatient care is therapeutic and safe as experienced and defined by patients
- co-produced approaches to safe, therapeutic, inpatient care, which is trauma-informed, autism-informed and equity-focused
- deliver a programme of support which includes a focus on leadership, including lived experience leadership, and considers ‘ward to board’ requirements to generate cultural change alongside broader workforce development and learning networks
- co-produced inpatient roles that enable and sustain therapeutic inpatient care, building on good practice where it exists, and reducing administrative burden
Principles for using digital technologies in mental health inpatient treatment and care
The Principles for using digital technologies in mental health inpatient settings aims to help providers and clinicians consider whether use of a digital technology is the most appropriate, effective and least restrictive method of caring for or treating a patient in inpatient mental health settings.
The document aligns with the Culture of Care Standards and is founded upon a human rights based and least restrictive approach to care. It includes 8 principles to guide co-production and decision-making on procurement, implementation and use of digital technologies in mental health inpatient settings and also offers practical recommendations on areas including data protection, policy, staff training and recording in patient care and treatment plans.
The principles should be applied across all NHS-funded mental health inpatient service types, including those for patients with a learning disability and autistic people, children and young people and older adults; as well as specialised mental health inpatient services, such as mother and baby units and secure services.