FCAMHS changes the way they gather feedback and hits 90% approval rate

Claudia Rodriguez Garduño (Assistant Psychologist and Research Assistant) pictured above.

The Portman Clinic, which is part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, was founded in 1933 and is an NHS out-patient clinic specialising in the psychoanalytic assessment and treatment of criminal and troubling sexual behavioural problems in children and adults.

One of the Portman’s flagship services is Forensic CAMHS (FCAMHS), a specialist forensic service that supports professionals who are working with young people who present with high risk of harm to self/others and who are currently or at risk of engaging in offending behaviour.

The service offers clinical consultation to professional networks, which are based on psychoanalytical understanding of risk.

As part of FCAMHS quality improvement work the service is looking to increase the quality of the feedback it receives to understand the impact of their interventions and how they can improve their service.

The service has created a new procedure for collecting feedback that is consistent and embedded in their interventions.

Since the new system was embedded 9 months ago, the service has received 42 surveys.

“This is a lot more feedback than the year before (2023), where we received 5 completed surveys” said Claudia Rodriguez Garduño, Assistant Psychologist and Research Assistant overseeing the new feedback process (pictured above).

“We aim is to increase feedback response rate to 30-50% by next year”

90% of the feedback was positive, with some neutral feedback at 8% and a very small percentage of negative feedback at 2%.

“We are really keen to gather the learning from the less positive feedback to improve the service we deliver. We want to promote the service with professionals in boroughs who use the service less such as Tower Hamlets” said Dr Louisa Stokou, FCAMHS Acting Service Lead and Consultant Clinical Psychologist.

FCAMHS also delivers innovative community-based projects. Their specialists co-locate to group training programs within schools, they conduct reflective practice groups with third sector organisations, and they provide specialist training and supervision groups.

After a recent training session, a professional client said: “I received a prompt response, good communication and efficient support from FCAMHS. Thank you”