Tom Ayers

Tom has worked in mental health for nearly 20 years, starting life in the NHS as a Management Trainee. He spent the first 11 years of his career in operational management roles in mental health, latterly as Service Director for Community Mental Health Services. 

Tom has led the NCCMH for the past 8 years, leading the development of evidence-based frameworks that became NHS England policies, including the Community Mental Health Framework and Advancing Mental Health Equality, and setting up the Public Mental Health Implementation Centre at the Royal College of Psychiatrists.  

Over the last 6 years Tom has led a series of national Quality Improvement Collaboratives, which has in turn led to the NCCMH being a delivery partner on the Culture of Care programme, which represents the biggest opportunity he’s seen to create lasting and meaningful change, and leading the programme is a career highlight (so far) for Tom. 

Tom is trained as an Improvement Advisor with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, an Action Learning Set Facilitator with the NHS Leadership Academy and sits as a lay member of Fitness to Practice panels for the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). 

As a child Tom saw his family profoundly affected by mental illness. Although he didn’t fully understand the situation then, he has since come to realise that he made many of his career choices to honour that experience.