Share your experiences of NHS Community Mental Health Services
Project title: 2026 Community Mental Health Survey
Lead researcher: Chrysa Lamprinakou at Picker, on behalf of CQC
What are we doing?
You can volunteer if:
- You are a frontline staff member working in community mental health for the NHS.
What will this involve?
To help develop the survey, Picker is holding a focus group via MS Teams. During the focus group, we will discuss priority areas within mental health care. This information will be used to help us develop the 2026 questionnaire to ensure the topics covered are relevant and a priority to mental health service users. We will also discuss upon how best to engage service users in our research to make sure that we are using relevant and appealing materials across the most appropriate channels.
The focus group will last for up to 60 minutes and will be conducted during late February or early March 2026.
Do I have to take part?
- No – participation is voluntary, it is up to you whether or not to take part.
- You can decide not to take part at any time – even after it has started, without giving a reason.
Would my participation in this study be kept confidential?
- Yes – any information or comments you provide during the interview will be kept entirely confidential.
- No identifying information (such as your name, the names of other healthcare staff) will be recorded or shared with your employer.
- Your responses will be anonymised and findings will be reported in a way that does not identify you as an individual.
- You will be asked to sign and complete a consent form that will be used only by researchers to confirm you have agreed to take part.
- Your personal information will not be shared with anyone outside the research team, unless required by law, where there is a clear overriding public interest, or if something you say indicates risk of immediate harm.
What will happen to the information that I share?
The information that you share will be used to inform the development of a new questionnaire for the Community Mental Health Survey. The survey will be used by the CQC and NHS trusts to understand and improve peoples’ experiences of community mental health care.
CQC and Picker comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Picker also complies with the Market Research Society’s (MRS) Code of Conduct by maintaining certifications from the International Standardisation of Organisations. Any sensitive or confidential material is stored securely in line with our data protection policy.
All the information you share with us during the interview will be deleted two weeks after we have completed survey development, unless deletion is requested sooner.
Who is organising the research?
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England. They make sure that health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and they encourage care services to improve. You can find out more about CQC’s work on its website: www.cqc.org.uk.
Contact details
If you have any questions about the research, before or after the interview please do not hesitate to get in touch with the following contacts at Picker: The Mental Health Survey Team: [email protected].
Privacy notice
CQC’s Privacy Notice (https://cqc.org.uk/about-us/our-policies/privacy-statement) describes how CQC use personal data and explains how you can contact us and invoke your rights as a data subject. Picker’s Privacy Notice (https://www.picker.org/cookies-privacy/) provides information on who we are, how and why we collect and use personal information, your rights in relation to your personal information and how to contact us and supervisory authorities in the event you have a question or complaint concerning the use of your personal information.
We will process your information in accordance with the requirements of GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the CQC or Picker team: [email protected] or [email protected].