From ‘institutional’ to welcoming and therapeutic

Introducing Tom Cahill, DIMHN chair, Jenny Gill, explained that he began his career as a mental health nurse, later holding a number of increasingly senior positions in the field before being appointed chief executive of Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) in 2009. In the chief executive role, he had overseen a number of capital developments, including the award winning £42 million adult acute inpatient mental health unit, Kingfisher Court, built by Medicinq Osborne at Kingsley Green near Radlett. Tom Cahill said he would give the audience a CEO’s view of the impact of good (and bad) buildings on service-users and staff, in a presentation entitled ‘Building for better care’. In opening, Tom Cahill said he had been asked to talk about the Trust’s work in ‘transforming’ its services. While his presentation would thus naturally focus on buildings, the ‘transformation’ was also ‘about culture, dignity and respect, the way we think, and the way we behave’. He would thus also cover ‘the journey’ the Trust had been through in this respect, which was ‘all about our service users and their carers’.

Beginning, however, with some facts and figures, he explained that the £200 m turnover mental healthcare provider, based predominantly in Hertfordshire, also delivers services into North Essex and Norfolk. The Trust employs around 3,000 staff, has some 37,000 service-users, about 3,000-4,000 of them ‘seriously unwell’, and a thriving IAPT service across North Essex and Hertfordshire which, Tom Cahill said, ‘really increases the level of contact we have with service-users’. He added: “Most of our work is in the community.”

HPFT provides services including adult mental health, learning disability, CAMHS, older people’s, forensic, and medium (LD) and low secure services, plus eating disorder and mother and baby services. Tom Cahill said the Trust’s key values were central to everything it did. The values – to be ‘welcoming, kind, positive, respectful, and professional’ – had been chosen by service-users and staff, ‘with no management speak, or Board directors talking about effectiveness or efficiency’. He told delegates: They are vital to us, because they underpin who we are and how we work, including the way we interact with each other – whether as service-users, carers, or staff. The values have underpinned a lot of our work over the past three years.”