South Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (SEPT) is one of the largest NHS providers in the country of health and social care services for people with mental health problems and people with learning disabilities. In south Essex, we cover a population of around 725,000, and we have an annual income of around £100 million to deliver services for local people. We also deliver forensic mental health services for the whole of Essex.

We are a responsive, innovative and dynamic Foundation Trust delivering leading edge mental health and learning disability services in a constantly changing environment. Unlike acute hospital services, mental health and learning disability services are mainly provided in community settings with defined geographical localities. As a result we operate from about 50 locations across Essex

SEPT provides a comprehensive range of services including:

• Mental health services for adults and older people
• Essex wide forensic services
• Low and medium secure services
• Specialist children’s services
• Inpatient adolescent mental health services
• Learning disability services
• Drug and alcohol services
• Other specialist services

Mental health and learning disability community services are delivered by teams of highly skilled and qualified health and social care staff to people in their own homes, in residential and nursing homes, and from our resource centres and clinics. Hospital based care is provided at Brockfield House, Rochford hospital, Thurrock Community hospital and the Mental Health Unit at Basildon hospital.

In January 2008 we welcomed our first patients to our brand new state of the art hospital at Rochford. In 2009 we opened our new Brentwood Resource Centre which houses mental health outpatient services, day care and therapy services for adult and older people. Also in 2009 we opened Brockfield House, our state of the art forensic unit on the former Runwell hospital site. All patients have now transferred from Runwell Hospital and this will close in early 2010.

The Trust opened two brand new purpose built nursing homes for the long term care of older people with mental health needs. These were opened in the summer of 2004 and are located in Rayleigh and Westcliff.

We became one of the country’s first mental health and learning disability NHS Foundation Trusts in May 2006. We have successfully recruited well over 10,500 members to our staff and public constituencies. Our members are represented by our Board of Governors who, along with our Board of Directors, takes forward the strategic and operational aspects of the Trust.

In 2009 SEPT was awarded the top score of 'excellent' in both the categories: 'quality of services' & 'use of resources' by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) - the only mental health trust in the country to achieve this high level of quality for three years in a row.

The findings were announced in the CQC Annual NHS Performance Ratings: a system which scores all NHS trusts in the country on aspects of their performance, including the quality of the services they provide to patients and the public and how well they manage their finances and other resources such as their property and staff.

SEPT is the first mental health and learning disability trust in the country to achieve University Trust status. Traditionally, community-based Trusts were prevented from gaining University Trust status, as the Government’s criteria largely depended on the numbers of doctors being trained by a Trust. SEPT’s success has kick-started national reform of this old-fashioned model, by shifting the emphasis onto the academic achievements of the whole staff team.

In 2009 SEPT was voted top in three categories in the prestigious Healthcare 100 survey organised by the Health Service Journal and Nursing Times that names the top 100 healthcare providers to work for in the UK. SEPT was voted as the top mental health trust to work for, top trust for employing managers and eighth best trust to work for overall in the UK. SEPT was also the largest employer in the top 10, the only organisation that falls within the 1,000 – 3,000 employees category.

In 2010 we are embarking on another first for SEPT. We will be taking over the management of mental health and learning disability services from Bedfordshire and Luton Mental Health and Social Care Partnership NHS Trust (BLPT) from April 2010. All staff, services and buildings will be managed by SEPT and we are working closely with colleagues from BLPT to make sure this process is seamless – so it will be ‘business as usual’ for service users, carers and local people from day one.

The Trust was established in April 2002, following a full public consultation with formal Partnership Agreements (Section 75) with Essex County Council, Southend-on-Sea Borough Council and Thurrock Council. The partnership agreements mean that we have social care colleagues integrated within our community teams and ward based clinical staff. This ensures effective and efficient health and social care for our service users in hospital and in the community