The Trust

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

The background

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust runs a psychology and counselling service that works closely with human resources and occupational health colleagues.

The approach

The service is routinely evaluated using a range of measures including valid and reliable pre and post measures of psychological change as well as service satisfaction rates.

The impact

The clinical outcomes are generally positive with employees showing significant clinical change. For example, a city university academic paper demonstrated that following resilience training one group of 68 nurses went from ‘clinically relevant’ (3.87 general health questionnaire score) mental health difficulties to a level that that was better than average (1.11 general health questionnaire score).

The trust utilises this data and feedback from clients to adapt the service to fit the changing needs. For example, information has helped the trust explore and identify a range of interventions for meeting employee mental health needs beyond one-to-one counselling / therapies such as providing self-help materials, online resources, and psychological skills training. To ensure accountability, the service produces an annual report that summarises evaluation outcomes and feedback from users. As a result, mental health sickness absence has reduced over the years that the service has been operating.