Publish date: 10 June 2025
This week NHS England’s National Medical Director for Mental Health and Neurodiversity toured two of our facilities and came away inspired and impressed by the work of our staff.
Dr Adrian James (pictured on the right here) who had last visited our high secure site in his early days in the profession in the 1990s, met teams in Ashworth accompanied by our Chief Medical Officer Dr Noir Thomas.
Dr Thomas said: “It was excellent to welcome Dr James and to show him how we support complex patients safely and with meaningful activity. I’m really pleased that he could observe Ashworth staff so successfully doing what they do best.”
Dr James said: “The team demonstrated all the values you would want to see to ensure patient focused care is delivered. The staff I met were clearly committed to providing the best possible care, with an endless desire to innovate and improve, for example in relation to patient safety and meaningful activity.”
Later in the day, Dr James visited children and young people’s services at Knowsley Resource and Recovery Centre. A guest of our Deputy Medical Director Dr Ashish Kumar, Dr James said: “This was a truly inspirational visit. Teams here are delivering on challenging access targets whilst providing excellent care with very positive lived experience feedback which I witnessed first hand.”
The national director praised Trust leaders and thanked staff at both sites, as well as the service users and their families from our children’s services who met with him.
