Trust Strategy 2026-2030
Our commitment to people using our services, their families and carers; the people we employ; the communities we serve and our partner organisations.
Strategic context
Devon Partnership NHS Trust is entering the 2026-2030 period at a time of significant challenge and opportunity for mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity services, locally and nationally.
Over the last three years, the Trust has delivered against its 2022-2025 strategy, setting clear priorities, strengthening governance, and maintaining a focus on outcomes and impact. We can be proud of many achievements in our services and teams with and for the people and communities we support and the partners we work with, that we will build on. Alongside this, important foundational work has been completed through the co-production of our Clinical Strategy and Together Strategy, which set out how care should be delivered and how we work with people who use our services, carers, staff and partners. These and associated enabling strategies, and our evolving Trust Improvement Programme, form important foundations for delivering this next phase of our journey.
Our Trust Strategy builds on that progress and learning, while responding to a rapidly changing environment. Nationally, the NHS 10-Year Plan and new outcomes framework signal a clear shift towards prevention, integrated community-based care, digitally enabled care, productivity and tackling inequalities. Locally, system partners have refreshed the Devon Health and Care Strategy and Devon and Torbay Health and Wellbeing Board Strategies. Local government reform, economic pressures and population need continue to shape demand for services and the context in which we operate.
At the same time, the Trust faces well-evidenced challenges. Demand for services continues to rise, particularly for people with complex needs, while workforce pressures, financial constraints and operational complexity remain significant. Engagement and benchmarking highlight unwarranted variation, duplication, fragmented pathways and interfaces, and a gap between strategic ambition and day-to-day operational reality. These challenges are not unique to DPT, but they require a clear, realistic and focused strategic approach.
Iterative engagement with staff, people with lived experience, carers and partners has been central to shaping this strategy and support the Board's deliberations and development of strategic intent. This engagement demonstrated strong support for the Trust's mission, values and strategic direction, alongside a clear message that success will depend on prioritisation, clarity and delivery. Key themes included the foundational importance of staff wellbeing and psychological safety, the need to reduce siloed working and duplication, more effective communication and collaboration, and greater involvement of staff and people with lived experience in shaping and delivering change.
Learning from Experience work undertaken across the Trust reinforced these messages. It highlighted that, while a lot of effort goes into learning and feedback, this does not always lead to clear improvements in day-to-day care. Processes can feel complex and time-consuming, and learning is sometimes too distant from frontline teams. There is strong support for simpler systems, clearer ownership, and a greater focus on helping teams make practical changes that last.
Taken together, this context points to a clear conclusion: the Trust does not need more strategies or priorities, but enable greater focus, coherence and delivery. This Trust Strategy therefore sets out a small number of clear, interdependent strategic aims, underpinned by a shared way of working. It balances ambition with realism, emphasises outcomes over activity, and places learning, inclusion, partnership and staff wellbeing at the heart of delivery.
Our strategy is intended to be a living framework rather than a static all-inclusive document. It provides clarity on what matters most, while allowing flexibility to respond to emerging need, evidence and learning over the period to 2030. Above all, it reflects a collective commitment to improving outcomes, addressing inequalities and making the best possible use of resources for the people and communities we serve.
Mission
Our mission is to achieve excellent health outcomes and address health inequalities, championing mental health, learning disabilities and neurodiversity.
Our Values
We commit to living our values through how we lead, work and make decisions every day.
Respect and dignity
We value each person as an individual, respect their aspirations and commitments in life and seek to understand their priorities, needs, abilities and limits. We take what others have to say seriously. We are honest about our point of view and what we can and cannot do.
Commitment to Quality of Care
We earn the trust placed in us by insisting on quality and striving to get the basics right every time: safety, confidentiality, professional and managerial integrity, accountability, dependable service and good communication. We welcome feedback, learn from our mistakes and build on our successes.
Compassion
We respond with humanity and kindness to each person's pain, distress, anxiety or need. We search for the things we can do, however small, to give comfort and relieve suffering. We find time for those we serve and work alongside. We do not wait to be asked, because we care.
Working together for people who use our services
We put patients first in everything we do, by reaching out to staff, service users, carers, families, communities and professionals outside the NHS. We put the needs of service users and communities before organisational boundaries.
Everyone counts
We use our resources for the benefit of the whole community and make sure nobody is excluded or left behind. We accept that some people need more help, that difficult decisions have to be taken - and that when we waste resources, we waste others' opportunities. We recognise that we all have a part to play in making ourselves and our communities healthier.
Improving lives
We strive to improve health and wellbeing and people's experiences of the NHS. We cherish excellence and professionalism wherever we find it - in the everyday things that make people's lives better as much as in clinical practice, service improvements and innovation. We recognise that all have a part to play in making ourselves, patients and our communities healthier.
Strategy delivery, accountability and outcomes
Delivery of the Trust Strategy will be embedded within the Trust's core planning, governance and improvement processes, ensuring a clear line of sight from strategic intent to day-to-day delivery. The strategy sets the long-term direction for the organisation, while annual operating plans translate this direction into a small number of clear, prioritised objectives each year, aligned to the six strategic aims. Supporting strategies and plans - including, but not limited to, the Clinical Strategy, Together Strategy, Carers Strategy, Workforce Development Plan, Digital Strategy, Green Plan, Estates Strategy and Multiprofessional Strategy - act as enabling frameworks and are expected to demonstrate explicit alignment to the Trust Strategy.
Accountability for delivery sits at all levels of the organisation. The Trust Board sets the strategic direction and approves annual priorities, while the Executive Team is responsible for coordinating delivery and managing interdependencies across programmes of work. Clear executive and senior leadership ownership will be assigned to each annual priority, supported by delivery plans that set out responsibilities, milestones and key risks. Consistent with learning from experience, emphasis will be placed on local ownership of improvement, empowering teams to lead change where care is delivered, supported by clear governance arrangements and escalation where required.
Progress against the strategy will be monitored through the Trust's evolving Integrated Performance and Quality Reporting (IPR) framework, which adopts a balanced scorecard approach and is reviewed by the Board regularly. This provides a holistic view of performance across quality and safety, outcomes and experience, workforce and wellbeing, finance and use of resources, and delivery risks. Reporting will focus on outcomes and impact, rather than volume of activity alone, and will be used to support constructive challenge, learning and informed decision-making.
Learning and improvement are integral to this approach. Insight from performance reporting, quality reviews, patient, carer and staff feedback, and Learning from Experience work will be used to identify what is working well, where progress is not as intended, and where priorities or approaches need to change. A clear distinction will be maintained between assurance and learning, with learning processes designed to be proportionate, supportive and focused on behaviour change and sustained improvement rather than the production of action plans.
Success in delivering the strategy will be measured through a small number of meaningful outcome measures, aligned to each strategic aim and tracked through the IPR and annual planning cycles. These will include measures of quality and safety, access and experience, clinical outcomes, workforce wellbeing and inclusion, partnership effectiveness and financial sustainability. Progress and learning will be communicated transparently to staff, people who use services, carers and partners, reinforcing a shared understanding of how the strategy is being delivered and where it is making a difference.