About us
We are an innovative mental health Trust and have been at the forefront of mental health transformation for a number of years - we are a beacon of excellence with a number of national services
South West London and St George’s is a Mental Health Trust that serves 1.2 million people across the London boroughs of Kingston, Merton, Richmond, Sutton, and Wandsworth.
We are a 2,500-strong team providing high quality mental health care, treatment and recovery support to about 20,000 people from southwest London and beyond at any given moment. We are proud to be one of the most diverse organisations in the NHS and we are working together to create an organisation in which we all belong and one which celebrates our diversity, promotes equity, and is actively working towards being anti-racist.
As a leading provider of mental health services and a beacon of excellence for many national mental health services, the Trust has a long history of inclusion and innovation that has helped to redefine the mental health landscape in the UK.
We have more than 100 clinical teams working across four service lines that make sure high-quality patient-centred care is our priority:
- Acute and Urgent Care Services
- Community Services (for adults largely of working age)
- Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and all age Eating Disorders Services
- And a Specialist Service Line which includes Forensics, Deaf Services, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), Neuropsychiatry, Cognition and Mental Health in Ageing and Neurodevelopmental services.
We are committed to addressing entrenched health inequalities and becoming actively anti-racist. We are innovative and have been at the forefront of mental health transformation for a number of years. We are committed to engagement and co-production and aspire to work hand in hand with our communities, our patients and their carers in everything we do.
Services have been provided from the main Trust Headquarters site - Springfield University Hospital in Tooting - for more than 160 years. We have further inpatient and outpatient services provided from Tolworth Hospital in Kingston. We also operate in many other community locations in South West London. We provide community and outpatient services in each of the boroughs.
We serve and provide many specialist services such as national Deaf services, learning disability services, and services for people with eating disorders and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
Over the years, mental health services, philosophies and treatment have radically changed and today we are an innovative and forward-thinking mental health provider. Through our Better Communities Programme we are investing in: how we provide care, our people and our environment, to reduce mental health stigma and provide outstanding facilities and services in which our patients can receive care and our teams can develop.
This has included the opening of the brand new Trinity and Shaftesbury Buildings at Springfield University Hospital which include eight inpatient wards, outpatients services and teaching and learning facilities. These buildings sit at the centre of our brand new community - Springfield Village. The culmination of the programme will see the transnformation of acute and urgent care and adult community services and the redevelopment of Richmond Royal, Barnes and Tolworth Hospitals. Taken as a whole, Better Communities represents major investment in our local communities and will create a truly sustainable future for mental health services in South West London.
The emphasis for our services is on recovery which means supporting people to get on with their lives and to focus on the things which are important to them. Reflecting our holistic approach to providing effective mental health services, we also host the South West London Recovery College. This was launched in 2010 and was the first of its kind in the UK using a recovery-based approach to encourage people to become experts in their own self-care and wellbeing.
Our staff are among some of the most advanced and experienced practitioners in their fields and we are proud of the positive impact their services have for both patients and the wider community. We are embracing new roles and have developed and recruited to a number of innovative new clinical and non-clinical positions. We invest in research, innovation and training in mental health and are connected to several academic and research organisations.
As a teaching Trust, we also provide education, training and research in partnership with a number of universities including St George’s University of London, Kingston University London, London South Bank University, King’s College London, University of Surrey, The Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology and Brunel University London. Our affiliated University is St George’s, University London who nominate a non-executive director onto our Board.
We ensure that co-production is at the heart of what we do, working hand in hand with patients, carers, volunteers, Peer Support Workers and our communities. As part of this we are proud to be one of only 20 mental health trusts in the country to become a stage 2 member of the Triangle of Care, which recognises the efforts that have been made to improve carer support.
We also work in partnership through our leading South West London Integrated Care System, at ‘place’ through each of our five boroughs and as part of the groundbreaking South London Mental Health and Community Partnership (SLP) along with Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM), focusing on collaborating to improve quality, outcomes and efficiency. Ensuring that highly specialised care is delivered as close to home as possible.
Our clinical expertise has led us to develop and contribute to ground-breaking national policies. We also regularly receive visitors to transfer knowledge and share good practice. From community outreach to informing government policy, we are working to provide the best in mental health care.