Vision
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust aims to build on its position as a national and international centre of excellence in mental health. It will remain dedicated to the development and delivery to the highest standards of mental health treatment, education and training, organisational consultancy, and research.
Mission
• As an NHS trust to expand provision of, and access to, all areas of our activity.
• To draw on the trust’s research strength to provide new clinical methods, new services and new ways of delivering care, while increasing the evidence base for all services.
• To support the vision through the development of new and existing partnerships.
• To ensure that our services reach out to the socially disadvantaged and those that experience discrimination.
• To provide the highest quality training for mental health staff at all levels, with a focus on human relations skills.
• To expand the numbers of trained staff available nationally to support the greater provision of excellent services and to strengthen the recruitment of well-trained staff from ethnic minorities and other under-represented groups.
• To use our knowledge of groups and organisations to expand understanding of how organisations work. To extend our consultancy services to provide help to organisations in the NHS, the wider public sector and to private industry and commerce.
• To take a leading role in influencing mental health policy both locally and nationally, focussing on children and adolescent services, and adult and forensic psychotherapies.
Philosophy
The trust’s culture and work is underpinned by a number of core ideas that inform all the trust’s activity:-
• Mental distress is disabling and common. It can be as disabling as physical illness, and can prevent individuals realising their potential.
• The experience individuals have as infants and children within families and communities remains with them throughout their lives and influences who they become. While the influence is often positive, difficult experiences can also have a lasting impact.
• Psychological therapies are a powerful way of promoting mental health, and of alleviating mental ill health, emotional and relationship difficulties. Intervening early in life, and subsequently, can contribute to the development of resilience in the face of the challenges that life presents.
• Help for parents, families and communities can mean that the next generation does not have to carry the burdens of the previous one.
• Mental health depends to a substantial degree on a sense of belonging and being accepted. Equity of access to services depends on active engagement with local communities
• Groups and organisations can become dysfunctional and a cause of stress; understanding and providing help for organisations can make a major contribution to satisfaction and productivity at work.
