2 November 2022

The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme started in October 2008 to provide psychological therapy for people struggling with anxiety and depression. IAPT is now one of the flagship programmes of the NHS Long Term Plan, with more than 1.2 million people accessing its services in 2021/22, however the IAPT brand has become a barrier to access, with the public struggling to understand the acronym. Choosing a new service name has been a long-standing discussion within the programme.

On that basis NHS England and Health Educational England National IAPT Programme Teams are commencing a period of engagement with our stakeholders on the new name for IAPT services, and associated messaging.

This engagement will run from the Tuesday 1 November to Friday 16 December 2022 and they will be using a dedicated online survey as well as existing working groups and meetings, holding some dedicated engagement sessions and briefing via bulletins/emails etc. In addition, a dedicated broadcast webinar will also be delivered on the 8 November 2022.

Alongside engagement with our current IAPT stakeholders, we will also be commissioning a public facing focus group, representative of our population and who have no prior knowledge of IAPT services. This feedback will be captured separately and analysed alongside the survey feedback.

The decision on the final name, and associated tagline/wording, will be based on the most popular options when considering all feedback collated during the engagement period. The public facing focus group feedback may be more heavily weighted in that decision-making process given a primary aim is to ensure the service name is clearer for those who the programme is trying to target.

Key milestones

1 November to 16 December 2022

  • Engagement period (and online survey) will run from 1 November to 16 December
  • The NHS England and HEE National Programme Teams will seek to form a small IAPT Rebrand Implementation Group (to include cross-system representation) to develop a plan around implementation of the rebrand at a local, regional, and national level.

By the end of December 2022

The engagement process will conclude and the NHSE and HEE National IAPT Programme Teams will

  • Collate, analyse, and produce a report outlining the findings and the recommended name
  • Finalise the implementation plan for rebrand.
    1. will be sought from NHS England Mental Health Leadership Team for the change to the service name.

January to March 2023

Implementation of the brand refresh will take place.

Click here to access the IAPT Brand Refresh Survey

For further information, please don’t hesitate to contact the team on England.MentalHealth@nhs.net/

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