joint logo

Development of the North London Mental Health Partnership and our new Trust

Our two Trusts of Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust have been working in partnership for the last three years.

In May last year, we published our new North London Mental Health Partnership Strategy, with significant input from service users, carers, staff, partners and wider communities.

While developing our Partnership Strategy, many stakeholders asked for clarity on the next  steps in the development of our Partnership. The Boards undertook an options appraisal in July
2023 and concluded, strongly, that coming together as one new Trust is the best next step for our service users, our staff, and our local communities.
The Boards agreed that by coming together as a new Trust we can:

  • Ensure that no matter where you live, care is delivered as close as possible to your home, with shorter waiting times and in a way that really supports your needs
  • Change the way we deliver our services to respond more effectively to an ever-growing population that is living much longer
  • Ensure we can provide care 24/7 for when people are in mental health crisis
  • Direct our resources to the areas of greatest need, in order to improve our performance and the care we give, and
  • Make our new Trust a fantastic place to work and to develop skills so that we recruit and retain the very best staff.
Nurse holding a painting

Our Strategic Objectives for 2023/24

Our Strategic Case, which set out why we want to form a new Trust, was approved by NHS England in December 2023. Following this, we developed our Patient Benefits Case and Full Business Case submission to NHS England. Subject to approval by NHS England and the
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, we will be a Trust, with a new name, on 1 October.

We will continue to engage our service users, carers, staff, partners and local people in coproducing the culture of our new Trust as it develops further, taking the best of both current organisations.
As part of our new Partnership Strategy we defined four Strategic Aims, with a number of Strategic Objectives which we focused on in 2023/24, as detailed below:

Our Vision and Values

Our new Partnership Values were adopted in autumn 2023 and now replace the existing Values and Cultural Pillars from the individual Trusts, to create a clear and consistent approach for our future new Trust.

Our vision:

Our values:

Our new Values have been developed with significant staff input, with over 600 of them attending engagement workshops and feedback sessions and completing surveys. Launched in September 2023, they help us develop the organisation we all want to work for, setting clear expectations about the behaviours we want to see from ourselves and each other – and those we do not want to see.

Nurse holding a painting
Nurse holding a painting

Our Purpose and Our Services

The Partnership covers a diverse population across Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey Islington and has contact with about 150,00 service users across the five boroughs each year.

In 2023-24 our total combined budgeted expenditure was £670.6 million. Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust £245 million expenditure was £425.6million and Barnet, Enfield and Haringey NHS Trust’s was £425.6million.

We provide integrated mental health and community health services to the people of north London, as well as some services regionally and nationally. Our services cover all ages. Our Partnership is made up of eight Clinical Divisions:

  • Barnet
  • Camden
  • Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS)
  • Enfield
  • Haringey
  • Hospital Division
  • Islington
  • Specialist Services 

The borough Divisions work with local authorities and voluntary community groups in their area to deliver services close to where people live.

We support people to overcome the hurdles they face with their health and wellbeing and to live as independently as they can. We follow an ‘enablement’ approach to providing care, which means we give people the skills they need to look after themselves, with our support, in the community. When people need a higher level of care, we provide that on our wards. We aim to provide services that are accessible, person-centred and responsive to the often complex needs of each individual. 

Our services in primary care include psychological therapies for mild to moderate mental illness, and for more serious illnesses, a service delivered by teams of psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses who support GPs to manage mental health problems and act as the gateway to secondary care mental health services. Staff in this role are often called mental health practitioners. We have specialist community services for people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), complex depression and anxiety, psychotic disorders, older people, dementia, and addictions.

Further reading