Meet the amazing team here at ELC…
Meet the team
Carol has hands on experience, working as a group clinic facilitator. She has been an ELC Associate Trainer since 2020, and has been working closely with the ELC team in a variety of roles since 2012. Carol delivers ELC’s Basic Group Clinic Training modules.
Carol has over 35 years of experience as a facilitator, coupled with 20 years of coaching expertise.
Having worked with NHS hospitals in London and private healthcare organisations across the UK, she has supported leaders and clinician directors in developing their leadership style. Working with ELC, Carol was actively involved in the introduction of group consultations across various GP practices in London from 2018. She trained and supported GP practices to run effective group consultations, often demonstrating the role of the facilitator with live groups of patients in a face to face setting. By coaching and guiding key team members, they were then able to run group consultations independently and confidently.
As the group consultation model has evolved, Carol has been part of the small team since 2020 helping clinicians, their teams and their patients to benefit from video group consultations. She regularly runs national video group consultation training in partnership with Redmoor. This training has now been extended to NHS Wales where Carol is accredited to deliver these programmes. By modelling the processes used and behaviours desired in group clinics and consultations, she is keen to help services see the benefits that can be achieved. By evaluating each training programme, she can feed into continuous improvement of the model.
Femeeda has hands-on experience of introducing group clinics in her practice. She has been delivering ELC accredited video group clinic training for North Central London Training hub since 2021 and joined the ELC team in 2022.
Originally from a community pharmacy background, Femeeda he has been working as a practice-based pharmacist in Barnet with a special interest in Asthma and COPD. Femeeda has been involved in developing and training the primary care pharmacy workforce in Barnet through her previous role as Pharmacy Lead for Barnet Training Hub. She is also the Education Lead for the pharmacy trainees and pharmacy technician trainees in her practice.
Helen has hands on experience of embedding group clinics. She joined ELC in 2018 as an Associate Trainer and has progressed to become ELC’s Lead for Group Clinic Training and Quality Assurance. Helen is closely involved in designing, delivering and overseeing delivery of ELC learning programmes across face to face and video group clinics. She also provides bespoke intensive support packages to enable pathway redesign across primary and secondary care, and runs ELC’s ‘Train the Trainer’ programme, supporting and developing new ELC trainers and expert mentors to achieve accreditation to deliver our learning programme modules to the required quality standard. Alongside Georgina, she facilitates ELC’s regular ‘lunch and learn’ webinars and delivers all 5 ELC group clinic training modules.
After 12 years working in and managing the development of Children’s Centres, in 2017/18, Helen worked with NHS Hertfordshire Community Trust Early Years Team and ELC to introduce group development reviews to replace one to one development checks for two year olds. This was additional work for the Children’s Centre team as they had not been involved in child development checks, which were historically delivered in a traditional one to one clinic format by health visitors and nursery nurses. The teams worked together to co-design the new group review process, which is now firmly embedded as standard practice in Hertfordshire.
Helen is a qualified business and personal coach accredited by the International Coaching Federation and she is an experienced trainer with a background in community work in the health and education sectors.
Georgina established The ELC Programme in 2009, with the ambition of putting what matters to people – patients, families and NHS staff – at the centre of system thinking and service delivery.
She is very hands on withi the programme and directly involved in the design and delivery of all elements of the group clinic change approach. She also regularly leads ELC’s Group Clinic Training modules and co-hosts regular webinars with Helen Longstaff.
She is very hands on withi the programme and directly involved in the design and delivery of all elements of the group clinic change approach. She also regularly leads ELC’s Group Clinic Training modules and co-hosts regular webinars with Helen Longstaff.
Georgina also works in advisory capacity at national level in England and Wales, supporting relevant leads to think through how to maximize spread of group clinics. This work also extends to regional and ICBs in England, as well as training hubs. In Wales, she works at health board level too and is able to help system leaders to understand how best to spread this impactful innovation in person centred care.
Having initially developed and spread an award winning new and innovative approach to commissioning – Experience Led Commissioning, which was evaluated independently by Universities of Westminster and Oxford, and in response to insights generated by this commissioning process across England, in 2015 she set out to develop a scalable way of embedding group clinics across the NHS.
This culminated in ELC and NHS England being awarded the prestigious Health Services Journal Partnership Award for Best Education Programme for the NHS in 2020.
When COVID hit, and building on this established partnership, ELC joined forces with Redmoor Health and NHS England to design and scale up a learning programme for primary care. The team trained in excess of 500 GP teams in a matter of months, and their work built the foundations for sustained spread of this model beyond COVID. This work was recognized in 2021 with two HSJ partnership Awards; a consecutive win for Best Education Programme for the NHS, and, in addition, Most Effective Contribution to Clinical Service Redesign.
Georgina also spearheaded the Redmoor-ELC Partnership, which continued post COVID and worked with Welsh Government to spread video group clinics across outpatient services. In 2022, the Welsh work programme was finalist and shortlisted for Best Education Programme for the NHS and Most Effective Contribution to Clinical Redesign.
Georgina has contributed to numerous publications and evaluations of the group clinic model and as part of her role, leads on research and development within the ELC team.
Georgina remains passionate about her work to spread group clinics and hopes that as we approach a decade after the group clinic concept first took root in the UK, she will continue to play a leading role in mainstreaming this person centred way to deliver care.
Jenny Aston, FRCGP (Hon) Queen’s Nurse, ALPN, PG dip, BSc (hons), IP, Dip asthma, Dip A&E, Cert Diabetes, RCNT, RN, RCGP, ILS instructor.
Jenny has been running group clinics regularly for over three years, and has helped her practice to adopt this way of working as part of routine practice across several care pathways. She also leads on the development of group clinics within her PCN. Jenny joined ELC in 2022 as an Expert Mentor, and has supported teams through intensive support since joining. Jenny delivers ELC’s Advanced Clinician and Simulation Training modules.
Jenny works 5 sessions a week as an Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) in a large teaching practice just outside Cambridge. She works in a team of ANPs alongside General Practitioners, trainee GPs, alied health professionals and a team of nurses.
She sees patients virtually and face to face, assessing undifferentiated conditions and either treating or referring to specialists as necessary. She also manages patients with long -term medical conditions including hypertension and diabetes. She has a real passion for person-centred health prevention. She runs training within the practice, for local clinicians as well as at National conferences.
She is the AHP and nurse lead for the Training Hub and holds various national roles, sitting on NHS England’s Advanced Clinical Practice Group and the Eastern Region HEE General Practice Nurse Network. She also represents The Royal College of General Practitioners as their AHP and General Practice Nurse (GPN) Champion. Her role is seeking to raise the profile of AHPs and GPNs and promote high quality training and development of these roles within primary care.
Kelly has been running group clinics for over three years. She joined ELC in 2022 and supports delivery of advanced facilitator and co-ordinator training, as well as advanced skills training for personalised care practitioners.
Kelly has led the development of facilitation and group clinic co-ordination in Granta, a large GP practice with a list size of 45,0000 in Cambridgeshire since 2017. Kelly also leads the Wellbeing team, incorporating the additional personalised care roles and has sats on the Advisory Board of The National Association of Link Workers since 2018, and advises on national policy.
Kristi has been delivering group clinic training face to face and virtually since 2018.
Kristi delivers all 5 modules within the ELC group clinic training programme. Kristi is an internationally qualified coach, registered with International Coach Federation, and an Associated Certified Coach (ICF ACC).
Kristi delivers all 5 modules within the ELC group clinic training programme. Kristi is an internationally qualified coach, registered with International Coach Federation, and an Associated Certified Coach (ICF ACC).
For over 20 years Kristi worked in a range of organisations such as NHS England and the Royal College of GPs.
Kristi now works independently as a leadership expert, focusing on the health, social care and the voluntary and community sectors. Kristi is deeply passionate improving and personalising care. Kristi coaches, mentors and trains GPs, nurses and healthcare teams, giving them time and space to think, plan and be their best.
Kristi specialises in leadership, personal growth and action learning and uses her coaching approach to train and support people to set up face to face and virtual consultations and clinics. Kristi believes they are one of the most effective and resourceful ways of enhancing patient experience, tackling isolation and creating a happy workplace for healthcare teams.
The ELC team is continuing to learn, improve and innovate. We are now the leading and a multi-award winning provider of group clinic training and practice development support and help clinical teams set up both face to face and video groups.
We work with primary care teams, specialist teams across cancer, orthopaedics, rheumatology, dermatology, diabetes, paediatric respiratory to name but a few disciplines. We have also helped physiotherapists, occupational therapists and dietetic teams develop group care models.
Moving forward, we are continuing to champion and spread this way of working and hope that by 2025 – 10 years since our since first support programme launched – group clinics will be a mainstream way of supporting and reviewing patients, and our dream of person centred care being the norm will be even closer.