The Tavistock Clinic and the Portman Clinic became a Trust in 1994.
The Trust is a major provider of clinical mental health services for people of all ages. Each year about 3000 patients are seen in the Clinics, with an annual average of 47,000 attendances. The Trust is also one of the country's leading NHS Mental Health postgraduate training organisations for public sector mental health and social care professions. The training programmes are strongly rooted in the clinical services provided for patients in the North Thames region, and in the more specialised services also available more widely in England.
The Trust is currently the largest trainer of child psychotherapists in the UK, taking a leading role in addressing the national shortage of trained professionals in this area. In addition the Trust runs a highly sought-after training in child and adolescent psychiatry, and is the leading provider of psychodynamic psychotherapy training for psychologists, nurses, social workers and psychiatrists in Britain. A new training for psychiatrists, forensic psychotherapy, has been pioneered in the Portman Clinic.
In addition to training and clinical services, the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is also a centre of scholarship and research, with many clinical and academic publications and research programmes. There are four academic units, each headed by a professor.
For over 60 years the Tavistock name has been associated with an in-depth understanding of organisations, both public services and commercial businesses.
The Tavistock Consultancy Service offers consultations to staff at all levels from chief executive to junior managers in organisations throughout Britain and globally. The aim is to increase the effectiveness of the organisation and its key resource - people.
Each department of the Trust also supports its clinical work by offering a consultancy service to a wide range of public and independent service organisations, focusing on helping with issues of management, leadership, team relationships and collective decision-making.
In common with all trusts of the National Health Service, The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is governed by the Board of Directors, with a non-executive Chair, five non-executive directors and five executive directors, including the Chief Executive, the Trust Director, the Dean, Medical Director Finance Director and the Clinical Director of the Portman Clinic. The Medical Director is responsible for Clinical Governance, an obligation on all health providers to monitor the quality of service.
The Board of Governors appoints the chair of the trust, non-executive board members and the auditors.
The Management Committee is the executive body of the Trust and oversees the work of the Trust's administrative directorates, clinical directorates, training, research and consultancy activities.
The Trust has four administrative directorates: Training and Postgraduate Education, Finance, Human Resources and Central Services. There is a close working relationship between the directorates and the professional work of the Trust.
The Trust consists of the Portman Clinic and three clinical departments in the Tavistock Clinic:
Each of these also has a range of trainings, so that clinical work and training are closely integrated.
The training activities of the Trust are co-ordinated by the Training Committee, chaired by the Dean, who is responsible for the management of the Trust's training activities.
The Trust's four clinical directorates are co-ordinated together in the Trust Clinics Committee, which integrates the directorates with the six professional disciplines, each of which has a head of discipline. The Chair of the Trust Clinics Committee is the appointed head of the professional staff of the Trust and is a member of the Trust Board.
The six professional disciplines are:
Each has a central training role and in addition has a national profile in contributing to professional policy in its discipline. The Trust's trainings are based on a multi-disciplinary approach so that the disciplines work together in teams.
The Trust has a long-standing relationship with the NHS regions, to improve training and to address unequal access to psychotherapeutic mental health services in the UK. In each region there has been an emphasis on establishing, with local practitioners, the priorities for training and development as part of a national Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programme tailored to the needs of each. This project is in its third year in the North West region, at Manchester, and has just started in Birmingham and Leeds. Further expansion of advanced CPD (Continuing Professional Development) programmes is planned with Newcastle as the next site of delivery.
In many regions of the country, the Trust offers accredited infant observation courses to enable students who complete the qualifying course to enter our child psychotherapy training. Observation courses are provided in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Oxford, Nottingham, Exeter, Florence and Rome as well as in South London, at The Lincoln Institute and Centre for Psychotherapy and from 2002, Newham, East London. [hyperlink with NW's text under Regional Development]
The Trust has a large R&D contract with the NHS which is led by the Director of Research. Staff who teach and practise at the Clinic are actively involved in academic and research activities and are recognized nationally and internationally as experts in their fields.
Many of the Trust's clinical trainees take higher degrees on the basis of their work here, awarded by one of four universities with whom the Trust has close links: University of East London, Birkbeck College, Middlesex University and the University of Essex. Medical staff also have links with University College London. There are also trainings outside London accredited by the Trust - in Birmingham, Oxford, Leeds, Nottingham, Liverpool and Bristol, as well as close links with trainings in two centres in Italy, in Zimbabwe, and courses set up by alumni in Spain, Australia, France, Brazil and India. There are former trainees in all continents of the world. Each year the Trust puts on a number of major conferences related to its work and it launches around half a dozen books by clinical and research staff, many in the Tavistock Clinic Series - a major series published by Karnac books.
The Trust continues to build its reputation for producing innovative and influential clinical research in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, family therapy, individual and group psychotherapy, and organisational consultancy.
Current studies are underway in the treatment of depression in both adults and children, and ongoing fundamental work in the development of mind in the earliest years of life.
A selection of key Trust Strategies and policies are available for information in PDF format.
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