Professional Groups, Clinical Pathway Groups and Workstreams

The Community Clinical Pathway Group brings together three NHS Trust providers that deliver specialist community forensic services and community learning disability forensic services across East London, including North London NHS Foundation Trust, East London NHS Foundation Trust and West London NHS Trust.

The Specialist Community Forensic Teams and have been working collaboratively to address the needs of the entire population, and consider issues arising when service users move between different clinical care teams such as sharing and agreeing staffing models to ensure consistency in the care and treatment services for patients in the community across North London; developing service user, carer and accommodation provider surveys to provide meaningful feedback on the quality and experience of care delivered by Specialist Community Forensic Teams; and agreeing a shared protocol on transfer and recall arrangements, which clearly sets out how the transition between different teams should be managed.  Add something about their focus on flow – e.g., ensuring they work in partnership with inpatient teams as patients are identified for discharge into the community ensuring that their transition into community services is seamless and timely.

The Learning Disability and Autism Pathway Group is a well-established forum of clinicians and managers who work collaboratively to develop services that are offered to people with a learning disability and autistic people, with an emphasis on equity of care.

The Learning Disability and Autism Pathway Group includes a sub-group whose work focuses on STOMP ‘Stopping Over Medication of People.’ STOMP a national initiative that aims to improve quality of life and ensure that people only receive psychotropic medication for the right reasons and in the right amount.

The STOMP project is helping to improve our understanding of psychotropic medicines and when they should be administered, whilst also ensuring that people with a learning disability and autistic people are involved in decisions about their health, wellbeing and treatment.

The male clinical Pathway Group provides a forum for forensic mental health staff to discuss the future development of male secure services. The group are undertaking a needs assessment within low secure service to ensure services are tailored to the needs of the North London population.

The Women’s Clinical Pathway Group includes members from each of the three female service providers (North Londan NHS Foundation Trust, East London NHS Foundation Trust and West London NHS Trust). Members meet to develop and share strategic aims for addressing the mental health needs of women residing in North London.

As part of its responsibilities, the Women’s Clinical Pathway Group monitors female patients originating from North London that are placed outside of the North London Forensic collaborative footprint and discusses options for the transfer of patients, to enable specialist care to be delivered closer to home.

The year ahead includes undertaking a whole system needs assessment for each female patient in North London and work to develop improved specialist learning disability and autism provision for women in collaboration with the Learning Disability and Autism Clinical Pathway Group.

The Allied Health Professionals Group brings together a multidisciplinary team of service leads from occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and arts therapies from each of the five North London Forensic Collaborative providers.

The group shares expertise and best practise to provide quality and effective care, alongside developing new initiatives based on the latest research and evidence-based practice, with particular focus on addressing inequalities in access for service users from diverse backgrounds.

The Allied Health Professionals Group will help to drive improvements in patient pathways and community transition to meet the needs of the North London population requiring forensic mental health care and treatment. Health Professionals include Therapists in art, drama, music, Chiropodists and Podiatrists, Dietitians, Occupational Therapists Arts, Physiotherapists, Speech and Language Therapists.

The Nursing Excellence and Provider Collaborative Professional Group provides a forum for Nursing leads across the five provider trusts to join up around a shared vision for quality and routinely shares learning, insights and intelligence into local quality matters.

The group identifies opportunities for improvement and concerns to quality, whilst developing local system responses to enable ongoing quality improvement for the local population and foster collaborative working. 

The Psychological Therapies Professionals Group includes psychologists from across NLFC who meet to share expertise, best practice and lessons learnt.

This group is commissioning a programme of clinical research to enhance the work of North London Forensic Collaborative. There are three research subgroups working alongside the forensic mental health services at North London NHS Foundation Trust, East London NHS Foundation Trust and West London NHS Trust.

The purpose of these teams is to support clinical research that has a beneficial impact on patient care, ensure the efficient running of our services and to help us to better understand and address inequality in North London Forensic Collaborative services.

The work of the subgroups intends to improve collaboration across all provider Trusts by conducting research that recruits across more than one provider and assist the strategic decision-making process within North London Forensic Collaborative. This exciting programme of research also enables our clinicians to initiate and develop their own research ideas.

NLFC is pioneering a patient flow programme to prevent unnecessary delays to admission, enable patients to receive the right treatment at the right time and to reduce barriers and delays to discharge. The programme follows Institute of Health Improvements model for quality improvement to address flow issues including admission processes, treatment pathways and barriers to discharge.

NLFC encourages continuous professional learning and development of its workforce. Staff Professional Groups and Pathway Groups hold one learning event per annuum to share good practice, evidence-based research on delivering forensic mental health services, and innovative approaches for supporting the differing needs of its service users. Patients and Experts by Experience are also supported to co-present their work and achievement at learning events.

Our learning events are highly successful with an attendance of over 450 collaborative staff during the last year.

NLFC Patient Grant Programme is launching in April 2024 in collaboration with the Allied Health Professionals Group. Grants will be offered to individuals in forensic services who have recently been discharged from inpatient adult secure services or are in the process of preparing for discharge to the community. The grants aim to help those who may need additional financial support to manage the transition and support better integration to the community. 

The NLFC Small Grant Programme for VCFSE groups based in North London offers funding to voluntary sector, faith, and grassroot organisations, to build relationships and work together to tackle inequalities and improve quality outcomes for forensic service users. VCFSE providers can request funding for up to £5000 to deliver projects that will improve health and wellbeing, promote recovery and inclusion, and enhance quality of life for individuals accessing forensic services in the community.