Foundation trust application — West London Mental Health NHS Trust

We have started our journey towards becoming a foundation trust (FT), and a leading provider of excellent mental health services.

NHS foundation trusts (FTs) are a type of NHS organisation created to devolve decision making from central government to local organisations and communities.

They are still firmly part of the NHS and provide healthcare according to core NHS principles – free care, based on need and not ability to pay.

Foundation trust status makes it easier for the people who use NHS services, their friends and family, our staff, our community and partner organisations to have more influence in helping to improve services. It also provides greater freedom to invest and manage finances in a way that benefits local people.

The process

To achieve FT status, we need a membership base that reflects our community.

In January 2011, we launched our mental health membership and anti-stigma campaign, Open Minds.

We’ve run many activities to inform our community about mental health issues, recruiting members to our Trust in the process. We also work with Time to Change, the national mental health anti-discrimination campaign.

Become a member of our Trust

Where we are in the process

We ran an extensive consultation between July and November 2011 to gather the views of our stakeholders and community on a number of issues for example on what our stakeholder groups or ‘constituencies’ should look like, who our Governors should represent, and what our name should be, among other important matters.

Based on the feedback from that consultation, we have made some small changes, and are now asking our communities to let us know what they think about those changes. You can read about our changed proposals, and give us your feedback, on our consultation page.