Triangle of Care Accreditation

CNWL’s inpatient wards and Home Treatment, Urgent Care and Psychiatric Liaison Teams have achieved Stage 1 of the national Triangle of Care accreditation award from the Carers Trust following a successful peer review accreditation visit on 5 October 2021.

The Triangle of Care scheme helps nurture a culture where staff, carers, families and service users work together to enable the best outcomes for the patient, making sure that carers are as involved as the service user wishes them to be.  The Triangle of Care scheme also emphasises the importance of making sure that unpaid carers can access support for their own needs, which are often overlooked.

To achieve this award, each ward or team undertook a rigorous self-assessment to demonstrate they are embracing the Triangle of Care standards and taking further action to engage with and support carers.  Every team has a Carers Champion, to help make sure that carers are identified, involved and supported. Over 300 staff so far have taken part in interactive, coproduced Carers Awareness training sessions which have been described as ‘brilliant’, - ‘completely changing the way I think about working with carers and families’. These Zoom training sessions are open to all staff and staff can sign up for asession here on our training and development zone LDZ: https://cnwllearning.org/course/view.php?id=1478

Examples of other positive changes that have taken place include:

• The introduction of a new carers’ information and support programme and carer clinics in Brent
• A new carers group for Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster carers
• Carers Champions having regular slots in the weekly team meetings in Milton Keynes
• A new Carer Peer Support Worker role in Kensington & Chelsea – one of the first in the country
• Good involvement of carers and families in Riverside Hospital
• Harrow Carers Champions offering 1:1 support to carers.

The central involvement team, Carers Council and Triangle of Care steering group also coproduced guidance leaflets on common sense confidentiality, as well as a welcome pack for carers, all of which can be found on the Involvement page on Trustnet (our staff intranet).

The external peer reviewers who assessed us said:  

“Absolutely amazing work you all are doing, so great to see and hear the passion and commitment from you all to get this off the ground, especially in these current difficult circumstances.”

– Tarek Seeraullee, Carers Lead, North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT)

“So many inspirational bits of work going on across CNWL - obviously great commitment from all levels of the organisation which is making it all come together to change culture.”

– Helen Miles, Head of Therapies & Involvement, South West London & St George’s Mental Health Trust

“The work is phenomenal. The presentations and carers stories have been incredible and so impressive.”

– Gabrielle Richards, Head of Inclusion, Recovery, Professional Head of Occupational Therapy and AHPs, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLAM).

“Impressive and inspirational.”

– Donna Bradford, Lead Reviewer, Carers Trust Triangle of Care Team

CNWL Carers Strategy Lead Grace Levy, who oversees the Triangle of Care at CNWL said:

“We are extremely pleased to receive our first ‘star’ for our stage 1 teams. We sincerely appreciate all of the hard work and dedication, not only by our amazing carers and service users steering all of this work, but our carer champions and leads who continued their roles on top of being stretched to capacity, and all frontline staff members in our teams who managed to complete their self-assessments and cooperate with our team even during an incredibly challenging 18 months. We hope to continue with the momentum that we have built up for the scheme as we enter our stage 2, and encourage all community-based mental health teams to keep an eye out for communications and emails about this work.”

Robyn Doran, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Lead for carers added:

“I am really pleased about this recognition of the gains made for carers so far – it  shows that the efforts of staff are working. We know we have a lot further to go but we’re on the right road and making progress – good progress.”

Ann Smith, carer and Chair of the CNWL Carers’ Council said:

“A very well done for the award of the 1st star, a very well-deserved milestone.  The journey started at the Carers Council many years ago, with a few false starts but with the full support of the Trust we started on this programme to improve services for the service users and most importantly raising the profile of the carer as an equal partner in the recovery pathway enabling better outcomes for service users, carers and staff.

Veronica Kamerling, carer and co-chair of the Triangle of Care Steering Group described the Triangle of Care as ‘a masterclass in co-production.’