Wandsworth Psychological therapies and Wellbeing Service (PTWbs) is a Primary Care Service open to people who are aged 18 years and over. The service is part of the Department of Health’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) initiative and the consists of Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners, Cognitive Behavioural Therapists, Clinical Psychologists, Counselling Psychologists, Employment Specialists and an administration team.The values of the service are centred around providing compassionate, thoughtful and evidence based treatment.
The compassion and thoughtfulness that goes into each patient contact can be seen through letters sent to clients, support in supervision and case allocation discussions that take place after each initial telephone consultation appointment.
Clients are then given a feedback call to discuss the treatment recommendations, offering a space to answer any queries and promote service user choice.
All members of staff, despite the level of training or experience, are nourished through Continued Professional Development once a month, and are consistently encourages to have their own clinical judgement when speaking to service users to ensure that each decision made is in line with the best interest of the patient, despite the current financial climate which lad led to a reduction of services.
Despite apparent barriers, staff are encouraged by senior leaders to think about ‘how we an make things happen’, empowering staff members to breed innovation.