About Us
Family Psychology Mutual is a staff-led mutual social enterprise that delivers evidence-based interventions to families of young people with antisocial behaviour.
Interventions include Functional Family Therapy (FFT) which is a structured, systemic intervention delivered weekly in family homes by trained FFT staff. We have used FFT standard as well as clinical variants for child welfare (FFT-CW) and for young people at risk of criminal exploitation (FFT-Gangs)
We started out offering Multi-Systemic Therapy (MST), an alternative to out of home placement that allows highly challenging young people to remain with their families with intensive in-home family therapy services and 24/7 on-call support. This team, whilst part of Cambridgeshire County Council Children’s Services, brought the practice of MST to the UK and has a strong track record of establishing and sustaining interventions with adolescents.
We have built up considerable experience of the implementation of evidenced based interventions and have provided both consultancy support and programme management for such services.
Family Psychology Mutual CIC benefits from having experienced clinical staff who are supported by a small business development and administration team. Family Psychology Mutual is owned by the employees and is a not for profit social enterprise. There is a formal company board that oversees the company. The board includes three independent Non-Executive Directors who bring oversight and challenge the board to ensure good governance at all times in our business operations and strategic direction. Three elected staff members also sit on the board.
Empowering families and individuals towards a safer and happier future. Working together with young people and families in their own homes and communities to create and sustain positive changes using high quality outcome-based psychological therapeutic based interventions.
The Board
The FPM Board is composed of nine members, three are Employee Directors whom are employee shareholders of the company, three are Non-Executive Directors who act as independent advisers and three are the Senior Leadership Team. The board provides the necessary support and governance to the business so that the company is effectively managed and we are compliant with company law. Our chair is one of the Non-Executive Directors. The Board meets every two months and holds a monthly call between meetings. The board is responsible for the oversight of the business and supports the Senior Leadership Team to deliver the strategy and business plan. We have supported our Employee Directors to train with the Employee Owner Association in governance skills so that they are able to attain the skills which they need to support the board. Representatives of the employees and our Employee Directors formed part of our recruitment and assessment of our Non-Executive Directors. All Directors are registered on Companies House
The Senior Leadership Team
The SLT provides the business with the executive leadership and decision making required for the effective operational and strategic management of the business. The SLT draws together the Clinical and Business Development Directors, who share the CEO function, together with the Operations Director who also acts as Company Secretary. Meeting weekly the SLT is in touch with all areas of the business and responds to the service leads (Programme Managers and Supervisors) through regular meetings as set out in the decision making matrix and meeting plan. The SLT also manages external relationships with partners and investors including attendance at strategic boards for governance purposes.
Programme Managers and Supervisors
The Programme Managers and Supervisors are the first line managers and operational decision makers in regard to clinical and operational work in the service contracts. Programme Managers will be working to support the teams and systems into which FPM are contracted and ensure that the Supervisors are supported in their delivery of service contracts. Both will attend governance and operational boards in the areas in which they operate and will provide first line management to the therapist teams. Supervisors will supervise therapist staff and provide clinical direction, evaluation and leadership of the referrals and clinical management of cases. All of our Programme Managers and Supervisors have higher skills in clinical work and continue in their professional development as well as in additional training in the core methodologies which we utilise.
Service Strategy & Business Plan
Objectives and targets
The core objective for the next three years is to grow our impact through enhancing and replicating our current work. Central to this is sustaining and extending the existing projects. Our current model of successful mobilisation gives us a strong market position and allows us to confidently assure commissioners of the quality of delivery which we will create.
Honing our implementation model and defining it for ourselves and for others will enable us to build on our position. FPM has leading experience of the implementation, replication and adaptation of clinical models in Children’s Services. This skill set has a value in the marketplace as taking a model and implementing it is neither straight forward nor is successful achievement of outcomes in any way guaranteed. This is recognised through our collaboration with Bridges Outcome Partnerships who have invested in services with us.
The FPM model of implementation is based on craft, experience and underpinning academic work concerning implementation in complex systems. FPM has learned about what the key issues are and how to manage the system and political environment in order to achieve the best conditions to facilitate the new intervention from mobilisation to achievement and then sustainability.
This can be where FPM is the provider or as Programme Manager guiding and directing an implementation process. Developing and articulating this model is a piece of work for FPM to further define and establish so that the key elements are set out for others to follow and to ensure the continuity of expertise within the company.
As the Covid pandemic recedes we wish to develop new opportunities for work as services reconfigure to meet the new demands upon them.
In 2022/23 we aim to have further developed our implementation model, standardised it where appropriate, and articulated it ready for presentation to potential partners for replication.
The focus for future growth in the medium term will be for the existing models. However we will not ignore how the market develops and what new opportunities are created.
In support of our growth ambition, and to allow us to articulate a compelling model, we have set targets across three further complementary areas:
1. We want to grow the impact we have with families through improving our service, and increasing our total number of clients. In turn this will help to prove the efficacy of our model which will support our growth ambitions.
2. We want to increase the surpluses that the business generates to allow for investment in service improvement and in our employees.
3. We want to be an exemplar of employee ownership in the delivery of mental health services, measured by sustained exceptional employee engagement figures.
