GIRFT is getting started on a new workstream aiming to ensure that more patients living with chronic pain – including children and young people – receive personalised, holistic and evidence-based care, with seamless transitions between services. 

Working in collaboration with the Faculty of Pain Medicine (FPM), the British Pain Society and wider stakeholders, GIRFT is welcoming a clinical lead and two clinical advisors to lead the new chronic pain workstream. The leadership team have expertise in pain medicine, primary care and paediatric academic rheumatology, offering a unique diversity of approach across community, primary, secondary, and tertiary care services, and across all stages of life. 

One in three people over the age of 16 have chronic pain and one in five children and young people are affected, leading to significant absenteeism from work and school and many hospital visits. 20% of adults reporting high impact chronic pain say that it renders them permanently unable to work, resulting in 28.4 million working days lost to the UK economy every year. 

In line with the aims of the Government’s 10 Year Health Plan and NHS England strategic aims, the work will look at early intervention and community services and cover the whole pathway, including secondary and tertiary care. System level peer reviews will be carried out with providers of pain management services to identify variation and challenges, and to develop a structured, best practice model. 

Areas of focus include the effect of inequalities and personalised care related to the management of pain, pain education, digital offers, support to return to work or school, reducing harm from medication, and access to multidisciplinary pain management programmes. 

Data from the FPM’s 2025 gap analysis document, which describes the variation in service delivery, commissioning and provision against the Faculty’s Core Standards for Pain Management Services (2021), will feed into the reviews. 

The three new GIRFT clinicians are:  

• Dr Helen Makins (clinical lead): Helen is a consultant pain medicine anaesthetist, working clinically with both adults and children in Gloucestershire, and has worked extensively on projects for people with pain, from community-based social prescribing projects for children to holistic clinical pathways and evidence-based criteria for pain interventions.  She is also a board member of the Faculty of Pain Medicine. 

• Dr Jacqui Clinch (clinical advisor, CYP): Jacqui is a consultant in paediatric and adolescent rheumatology and rare bone disease at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, and medical lead of the Bath National Pain Service for children and young people. 

• Dr Graham Syers (clinical advisor): Graham is a GP partner at Alnwick Medical Group in Northumberland, and a clinical lead with the North-East and North Cumbria (NENC) ICB, where he chairs the Northumberland System Transformation Board and is vice chair of Northumberland Health and Wellbeing Board.