Acute mental health service for adults in London

Matt is a proud registered mental health nurse, and came into the health profession given his experiences growing up with his brother with learning disabilities, and wanting to make a difference to people’s lives. After starting as a healthcare assistant, Matt completed his nursing training, where he developed a keen interest in people and mental health. He trained at King’s College London and started his nursing career with South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust on their specialist national self-harm ward.

Having moved into a community nursing role within substance misuse services, Matt subsequently led the service and, after a few years, became the trust’s lead nurse for addictions and then lead nurse for all trust specialist services. Matt became Assistant Director of Nursing/Trust Named Nurse for Safeguarding Children. While in this role, he completed a master’s degree in public administration at London South Bank University, presenting his resulting research nationally and internationally, and utilised the learning to develop trust safeguarding children and adult arrangements and governance before moving into the role of Deputy Director of Children and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMHS).

Following this, Matt worked in a consultancy capacity across senior nursing, safeguarding, and improving roles for a range of providers, commissioners, and a local authority before becoming the Director of Nursing at the Priory Hospital, Roehampton. He then led a local authority’s COVID Testing services and was an Assistant Director of Children Commissioning before securing his current Hospital Director role at Holybourne Hospital, where he has focused on improving the patient and staff experience, coproduction, and involvement to attempt to provide the safest and highest quality service for our patients.

Ashleigh studied occupational therapy at Canterbury Christ Church University. Over the last 13 years, Ashleigh has worked for the NHS, local authorities, and private care settings, ranging from community, rehabilitation, psychiatric intensive care and acute mental health services.

Ashleigh joined Holybourne Hospital in 2017 as the lead occupational therapist, and has gone onto become the head of therapies and a member of the senior management team. Ashleigh is passionate about reducing restrictive practices in mental health services.

Ashleigh has always had a passion for mental health.

Dr Choudhary has held substantive consultant positions in the NHS and independent sector over the years, having worked in medium secure forensic services, acute care and complex care/high dependency rehabilitation.

Dr Choudhary completed his psychiatric training on the St Mary’s scheme, London, while also holding an honorary clinical lecturer position at Imperial College London. Dr Choudhary is on the General Medical Council’s Specialist Register with dual accreditation in general adult and substance misuse/addiction psychiatry. He also holds an MBA in healthcare management.

In addition to his clinical responsibilities, Dr Choudhary has also overseen operational management projects, including the incorporation of telemedicine services, and e-prescriptions. He is passionate about medical education, technology in medicine, quality improvement across service delivery, and the involvement of individuals and their family in day-to-day care and recovery planning.

Andy’s nursing career has seen him progress through a variety of NHS and independent services for more than three decades. He has been instrumental in the development of safe practice in mental health care units and has commissioned specialist inpatient and community care focused forensic establishments in Essex and West London. Andy continues to drive progress in healthcare sector by ensuring quality improvement standards are upheld, and by collaborating on student placements, training, and development opportunities with top-100 UK universities.

Following 24 years of dedicated service with the NHS, Andy joined the independent sector as Service Director/Director of Nursing with Partnerships in Care in 2014. Before joining Active Care Group, Andy was Deputy Hospital Director/Hospital Matron in Roehampton for almost a decade.

Andy qualified as a registered Mental Health Nurse (RMN) (1993 — Anglia Raskin University), and in Forensic Mental Health (1997 — King’s College, School of Medicine and Dentistry), and he completed the Nye Bevan NHS Leadership Programme (2015 — NHS Leadership Academy).