Lancashire Care celebrates achieving Phase 1 Triangle of Care

Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust has received national accreditation from The Carers Trust in recognition for working collaboratively with service users and carers, and for its commitment to changing the culture of the organisation to one that is inclusive and supportive.

The Trust has been working together with its service users and carers in order to improve mental health care and experience. As a result, it is pleased to announce that it has now achieved phase 1 Triangle of Care, which was initially developed to improve mental health acute services by adopting six key principles*.

Achieving phase 1, involved the Trust and its carers working in partnership to complete a self-assessment for mental health inpatients units and crisis teams. Following the self-assessmentboth the Trust and its carers worked together to identify what needed to change to ensure that carers are part of the core business of the Trust.

The Carers Trust then reviewed the self-assessment process, and the Trust’s partnership working with carers agencies, carers and services and subsequent improvement actions. To date, the Trust has 500 members of staff who have now received carer awareness training and this has positively impacted on the number of carers assessments accessed. The Trust is now working to complete phase 2 Triangle of Care over the next two years, this will be completed across community mental health teams, who will continue to evidence the progress across the Trust’s wards and teams.

Sarah Harrison, Head of Experience at Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust said:

“We are extremely proud to have achieved phase 1 Triangle of Care, but even more so that we have achieved this by working together with the people who use our services and their carers.

“Ensuring that carers are recognised, listened to and supported is a huge priority for the Trust and the Experience Team and services have worked really hard to ensure that this is the case. This is a huge step forward for the Trust, in terms of our culture around carers and we look forward to continuing this approach and working towards the next phase!”

For more information about the Trust please visit www.lancashirecare.nhs.uk or for more information about the Triangle of Care please visit https://carers.org/article/triangle-care.