Enter & View: Mood, Anxiety and Personality Community Mental Health Team at SLaM

Healthwatch Lambeth carried out an Enter and View visit to the Mood, Anxiety and Personality (MAP) Community Mental Health Team in Brixton, part of South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. The service supports people with complex mental health needs, including mood disorders, anxiety disorders and emotionally unstable personality disorder, through care coordination, psychological therapies and group programmes. Overall, service users spoke positively about the clinical and emotional support they received, often describing staff as caring, respectful and genuinely invested in their wellbeing. Many valued the long-term nature of support, collaborative care planning and the ability to access specialist therapies such as Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. The service environment was also viewed positively, with a calm, welcoming atmosphere and accessible information for service users. 

Despite these strengths, service users raised concerns about communication, continuity of care and staff turnover. Some reported difficulties contacting care coordinators, delays in receiving responses during times of crisis and disruptions caused by staff sickness or changes in personnel. Several highlighted how building trust with clinicians takes time and that frequent staffing changes could affect treatment progress. Concerns were also raised about care plans not always being shared promptly, inconsistent communication about service changes and challenges experienced when moving from child and adolescent services into adult mental health care.

A major theme was the pressure faced by staff. Employees described high caseloads, staffing shortages and increasing levels of complexity among service users. Many felt they were struggling to provide the level of support they wanted because of workload pressures and resource constraints. Staff reported concerns about inappropriate referrals, long waiting times and difficulties transferring people to more suitable services. Several spoke of stress, burnout and insufficient opportunities for supervision or emotional support. Some questioned whether current caseloads were safe or sustainable, particularly given the complex needs of the people using the service. 

The report recommended improving communication between care coordinators and service users, strengthening crisis and care planning, providing clearer information about alternative contacts when staff are unavailable, improving support during transitions between services and ensuring service users are informed about significant service changes. It also called for a review of referral pathways, caseloads and staffing arrangements, alongside greater attention to staff wellbeing, supervision and training. The report concluded that the service was highly valued by many users, but that ongoing pressures on capacity and resources were affecting both service quality and staff welfare and required action at team, Trust and commissioning level.