An update from Mark Freestone
Mark Freestone Dear students,
Another very warm welcome to Tavistock Education and Training in our new home of North London NHS Foundation Trust. We are very excited by this new chapter in the Tavistock’s long and fascinating history, and delighted to be part of one of the largest mental health providers in England and Wales with several nationally recognised services.
Those of you who have been with us for a year or more may have noticed some differences in the way things have operated at the start of this academic year. Although we remain based in the Tavistock Centre, and our education and operations staff are unchanged, we are integrating in a much larger and more diverse Trust with a service user base of over 150,000 and over 6,000 staff. This means that our new host Trust has different ways of doing things and we are both learning and adapting to one another.
Sometimes this leads to some disruption and uncertainty, and we have certainly noticed this with respect to our IT systems and our estate in the Tavistock Centre, with equipment not working or rooms not set up correctly. There has also been disruption behind the scenes to our financial and HR systems which can slow our responses to some issues.
I am aware that this disruption will have been evident to some of you, whether you are joining us as a new student or returning to your studies, and on behalf of the Trust I apologise for this. In most cases, this has been a result of changes we could not have planned for, as they have taken place since the merger due to restructures within North London NHS Foundation Trust itself, in response to reductions in government funding to NHS mental health services. That is not to excuse any disruption but to help provide some context that the Trust is working within.
All of us at Tavistock Education and Training are working extremely hard to rectify these issues and ensure that we can support you and your learning to the standard we would expect. Most of these issues are out of the direct control of any of our staff and so I would ask you to be patient with them whilst we work together with colleagues in other parts of the organisation to obtain solutions. You are very welcome to raise problems through your course committees or to write to me at deansoffice@tavi-port.ac.uk if you have a particular issue you would like to raise.
Returning to the Tavistock’s history, it has always been one of irruption and seismic change, from the original move from a private clinic to become one of the first NHS Trusts in 1948 to the creation of a Foundation Trust in 1990. I am confident we will emerge stronger from this chapter in our history.
With best wishes,
Mark
Professor Mark Freestone
Dean of Postgraduate Studies and Chief Education and Training Officer