We are proud to be a member of the national Triangle of Care scheme to better support and involve carers. We have held one star membership since 2017.
We are committed to improving carer experience and carer involvement in care planning and in service improvement. This page has a summary of our annual report to Carers Trust about our progress implementing the six Triangle of Care standards.
Triangle of Care annual report, February 2026
Triangle of Care star status: Star 1, received 2017, reassessed 2023.
(Star 1 is for completing Triangle of Care self-assessment among crisis and inpatient services. Star 2 is for completing the self-assessment in crisis, inpatient and community services.)
Carer involvement and co-production
One of the big ambitions of our strategy is 'listen to improve'. This means that we want everything we do to be shaped by the views of our stakeholders: patients, service users and their carers, our colleagues and our partners.
For carers, this means that you have a voice in the care of the person they care for, and that the carer voice is listened to and influences key strategic decisions.
Standard 1: Carers and the essential role they play are identified at first contact or as soon as possible thereafter
Anecdotal evidence tells us that increasing number of teams are using the specific carer space of our electronic patient record system; Paris. At present we don’t have more robust evidence about identification and recording of unpaid carers of our service users and patients.
However, we have several improvement projects in progress and planned that will improve this. These include our single care plan approach and hospital discharge policy.
We plan to capture more in-depth information about the identification of carers and the use of carers space tile through the self-assessment process in 2026. The analysis of the responses from our services will help us assess the need for further changes in our electronic record system, and in guidance provided to staff.
Improving how we identify and support young carers is one of our priorities for 2026. We plan to develop this work in coproduction with young carers and carer services.
Standard 2: Staff are carer aware and trained in carer engagement strategies
We have delivered carer awareness training since 2015. In 2025, this was made mandatory for all staff who work with patients. We are working to provide the training at a scale that enables all staff to meet this requirement. All our training is co-delivered by a staff member and a carer. At present, we have seven staff co-trainers and five carer co-trainers.
While the training is mandatory to staff in patient facing roles, they only need to complete the training every five years. We aim to keep discussions about carers part of ongoing business as well. To support this, we are increasing internal communication and visibility of carer issues.
Standard 3: Confidentiality; policy and practice protocols re: confidentiality and sharing information are in place
Confidentiality and information sharing is a key element of the carer awareness training. This inspires conversations and is one of the key issues mentioned by participants in the evaluations. Not all staff are confident with information sharing.
We have a working group consisting of key staff members and carers with lived experience. The group is updating the section of our information sharing policy about information sharing with carers and family. The update is nearly complete, the group is now creating guidance for staff and for carers and updating the carer awareness training content.
Standard 4: Roles and responsibilities; defined posts responsible for carers are in place
Having a trust-wide carer experience lead in place has brought much needed capacity and focus to support our work with unpaid carers.
All our services are encouraged to have a carer champion or a carer lead. A key challenge for carer champions is having time and capacity for the role, knowing what is expected of them and where to find more information and support. Our newly established a carer champion community of practice now has 75 members.
Standard 5: Introduction to services; carers receive a comprehensive introduction to a service or treatment pathway
We have a trust-wide carer information leaflet about our inpatient services. This is available in key languages as well as an easy-read version. In 2026, we plan to continue to review and update existing carer information booklets and create co-produced booklets for more services. We plan to develop guidance for services about information booklets for carers and about carer information boards.
We also use communications to raise awareness of support for unpaid carers and our approach to working with carers. We do this through variety of ways, such as our website and digital screens in our clinical areas.
Standard 6: A range of carer support services is available
Staff learn about carer assessments, carer support groups and the benefit of peer support in the carer awareness training. They are also provided with guidance on where to find more information on our intranet and website.
Carer champions and other colleagues are encouraged to develop links to their local carer services and groups. Some of our services run carer education programmes or support groups.