The Ansel Group - Service History and Vision

For people with Complex Mental Health Needs, Challenging Behaviours and Personality Disorders

The team who would go on to create and run The Ansel Group first met in 2007. Wanting to make a difference became our catalyst. Delivering the service vision of our Chief Executive Tom Burns would become our focus.

Tom is a nurse by profession and throughout an extensive career in mental health and social care gained considerable experience and understanding of patients with complex mental health needs, challenging behaviours and personality disorders.

Tom recognised that there was a clear need for a service that was competent and dedicated to working with these patients not only to treat their mental health issues but also to work with each individual to bring about long-term and sustainable change. Tom was clear that any such service would need to encompass a number of key components if it was to do this successfully:

• It would need to be non-judgemental and to work with each patient in partnership.
• It would require a dedicated service operational framework and physical model specific to the needs of the patients.
• Consistency of that framework through a pathway of support and care would be critical.
• The service would need to be dynamic, iterative and responsive to the changing needs of each patient.
• It would need to be committed to appropriately training, supporting and enabling its entire staff team.
• It would need to be outward facing and committed to partnership working across sectors and tiers.

The Ansel Group committed to delivering this - a bespoke service dedicated to a defined patient population physically and operationally configured entirely around their needs.

The Ansel Group Nottingham Clinic admitted its first patients in March 2010 offering a 24 bed specialist Tier 4 residential mental health service environment for men, built to the latest draft guidance and focused entirely on meeting the needs of patients with complex mental health needs, challenging behaviours and personality disorders from both forensic and non forensic backgrounds. The Clinic’s culture is progressive, inclusive and collaborative.

The Ansel Group consider that every interaction has a therapeutic effect and that the people working with us need to be properly supported and equipped to manage the consequences of this. Therefore all of our staff are specifically trained and enabled to work with our patients. Additionally, in response to what can be a very challenging and emotionally demanding working environment reflective practice and de-brief are built into each shift and each member of staff receives regular supervision and peer support.

Within the Clinic each patient’s structured daily activity runs from 7am until early evening across the full week. It’s a place of focus and engagement for our patients. It’s intensive and it’s hard work. Our consultant forensic psychiatrist, psychologist and their Clinical MDT work with the patients daily and have a high and visible presence both on the ward and in our off ward shared space work areas.

We create the opportunity and capacity for each of our patients to stop and think, to consider actions and consequences and through this to develop pro-social behaviours and sustainable therapeutic outcomes. We achieve this through milieu and formal clinical interventions, working with patients individually and in groups and via proactive and informed risk management.

We do not provide a single model of care and treatment but offer a broad range of interventions tailored for each patient, based on their individual formulation and its adaptation as their needs change and they progress through the service. Our operational framework enables us to do this consistently and dynamically across the organisation and the care pathway. This is unique to The Ansel Group and combined with our focused approach is a powerful catalyst for change. We are delivering Tom’s service vision and we are making a difference where others haven’t.