The chance of getting complementary therapies on the NHS alongside conventional treatments has been given a boost by the Prince of Wales. His Foundation for Integrated Health is collaborating with five primary care projects which already provide some measure of complementary medicine.

With support from the Foundation, these Trusts will be able to learn from each other’s experience and develop best practice which others wishing to set up integrated healthcare services can also follow. At the launch of the Integrated Healthcare Initiative at St. James’s Palace, Dr Michael Dixon, Chair of the NHS Alliance said: ‘What we must do now is to listen properly to our patients and to what local people tell us. If we do, then I believe that we shall find ourselves lighting the fires that will lead to a new, integrated National Health Service.

‘Professionals from both conven-tional and complementary medicine heard of pioneering work of the Blackthorn Trust and Medical Centre, one of the latest winners of the Foundation’s National Awards for Good Practice in Integrated Health-care. At this NHS practice in Maidstone patients can have appoint-ments for art or music therapy, massage or counselling whilst others are prescribed work in the garden, the bakery or the cafÈ.
Much of the inspiration behind the Trust’s work in medicine, therapy, horticulture, nutrition, social relationships and community building is drawn from the work of Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian scientist and philosopher whose insights lead to a fuller un-derstanding of man as an unique and essentially spiritual being.
FURTHER INFORMATION : Dione Hills, Foundation for Integrated Medicine 12 Chillingworth Road London N7 8QJ Tel: 020 7619 6140 Fax: 020 7700 8434
EMAIL: georgia@​fimed.​org