Reducing Violence Against Primary Care Staff – Patient Rehabilitation Programme

NHS England Health & Wellbeing Team is running a Patient Rehabilitation Programme pilot over the next 3 – 6 months and will be completely free to participate in.  The aim of this rehabilitation offer is to prevent people who have recently received a warning letter from repeating the same unacceptable behaviour and to prevent them from entering the Special Allocation Service (SAS) safe haven. 

The letter provides a summary of the programme, together with details of how to make a secure referral once a patient has agreed to take part.  The leaflet can be shared with patients who have agreed to participate.  Practices may have patients who they feel might be willing to engage or they may be aware of patients who move between practices due to unacceptable behaviour that is not sufficient to warrant a referral to SAS.  Patients will need to opt in and agree to be referred.  They will also be required to attend two 3-hour sessions delivered virtually.

Intuitive Thinking Skills (ITS) use lived experiences to support their training programmes and promote the 3Rs – Respect, Resilience and Responsibility.  More details about the organisation can be found on their website Home – Intuitive Thinking Skills.  Matt Wilson, who is leading on this programme for ITS, has offered to speak to practices who would like to discuss further, whether this is by phone / Teams / Zoom.  Alternatively, ITS have representatives working locally who may be able to attend any face-to-face meetings as appropriate (e.g. PCN / Practice Managers meeting).  If anyone would like to discuss this with ITS, please contact Joe Nolan [email protected] who will help to facilitate a meeting.  Please do not send any referral patient data to Joe; only use the secure referral method outlined in the letter.

The Leeds SAS team are exploring how they can support people already registered at the SAS to complete this programme, which we hope will reduce the number of people re -registered with the SAS team and prevent occurrences of threatening and violent behaviour in practice.