Commission us

If you are interested in discussing how we can work together please contact our Business Development team. One of our regionally based Partnerships Managers will get back to you. Find out more about our approach and expertise below.

A Collaborative approach

At Richmond Fellowship we have a long history of working with our commissioning partners to develop high-quality support services.

We are part of the Recovery Focus Group, a highly experienced group of charities providing housing and specialist support services to individuals and families living with the effects of:

Mental ill health
Drugs, alcohol and gambling
Domestic abuse.

A national charity, we are one of England’s largest Voluntary, Community, Faith, and Social Enterprise (VCFSE) sector providers, delivering person-centred support to more than 20,000 people each year. Our services across England include Employment Services, Supported Housing and Residential Recovery Services, Crisis Services and Havens, Community Based Services, Social Enterprises and Domestic Abuse Services.

We work at a system, place, and neighbourhood level with health, local authority, employment, and other VCFSE partners to deliver person-centred services.

Proactive partnerships

We work proactively with commissioning partners to develop services tailored to their needs. We have a successful track record of delivering pilot projects to establish and evidence impact.

We work collaboratively with other providers, local commissioners, and the people we support to share effective practices and co-produce our services.

NHS & Adult Social Care

We understand the pressure NHS and Adult Social Care providers face in terms of unnecessary hospital admissions, delayed discharges, and supported housing pathways for mental ill health.

Our approach responds directly to the ambitions of the NHS Long Term Plan. We deliver sector leading services that offer alternatives to hospital admissions. These include mental health walk-in centres, step-down and crisis recovery housing, and outreach support services provided in the community.

Housing and capital investment

We are a Housing Association, and provide both housing and support services. We also have access to capital investment for property development. We currently have several multi-million pound apartment-style property developments in progress.

We share our premises development expertise with partners. This includes offering capital funding to match fund any block revenue contracts from our partners.

SPOTLIGHT: Our partnership with Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust (LSCFT) has seen us invest over £1.5 million. We purchased and refurbished three properties to become short-stay Crisis Houses, each operational within 12 months of initial discussions with the Trust.

Our step-down accommodation service in Derbyshire, in partnership with Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust started with a pilot. It is now an established part of their mental health system, delivering high-quality support while making significant savings for the NHS.

Alliance contracting

We know that increasingly our commissioners use Alliance contracting models (in many forms) to achieve common goals.

SPOTLIGHT: Richmond Fellowship is proud to be a key development member of the Durham Mental Wellbeing Alliance. A county-wide collaborative approach to a range of support services, including prevention, early identification, and recovery support for people experiencing mental health issues. This single-contract collaborative approach is known as an ‘Alliance’ where the incumbent providers for the original 21 contracts pooled their skills, knowledge, and resources to benefit people in County Durham and provide an improved, streamlined service.

CASE study

Two new Crisis Houses in partnership with South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM)

We are currently working with South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM), the largest provider of mental health services in the UK, to develop two new crisis houses, an adult service and a young people’s service to support individuals across Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark and Croydon. This collaboration truly reflects partnership working at its best by utilising the expertise and knowledge of SLaM’s clinical teams and Richmond Fellowship’s Crisis Service expertise.

This has been a long term partnership approach to the development of a community asset that is person centred and cares for individuals and their carers during a crisis. The crisis house model delivers recovery-focussed support to avoid escalation, build resilience, develop strategies, and achieve long term, sustainable outcomes for individuals who access this pathway. The Centre for Mental Health are also supporting an independent evaluation of the service model in year one so we can learn from staff (including peer support workers), service users and carers in how to deliver the best care possible.

Rod Booth, Director of Commissioning and Partnerships at SLaM

CONTACT us

If you are interested in discussing how we can work together please contact our Business Development team. One of our regionally based Partnerships Managers will get back to you.

Email us