Changing Faces has worked with a wide range of health and social care professionals over the past 16 years encouraging the integration of psycho-social rehabilitation into hospital and clinic settings for people who have disfigurements and their families.

Every year, over 530,000 people in the UK are estimated to acquire a disfiguring condition to their face, hands or body – from birth, accident, cancer surgery, skin and eye conditions, from facial paralysis and from medical accidents such as mistakes in cosmetic procedures.

Most will come into contact with the NHS – at GP clinic, A&E or specialist hospital service level. Many medical specialties provide services for them including dermatology, plastic surgery, burns, cranio-facial surgery, maxillo-facial surgery, ophthalmology, neurology, general surgery and oncology.

Current NHS initiatives such as the Choice Agenda, Person Centred Care and the merging of NHS Trusts/Primary Care Trusts and Local Authority Social Services Departments are all intended to place the patient / user at the centre of the system and improve the quality of their care and speed recovery.

Changing Faces advocates the development of health care that comprehensively and routinely addresses patients' physical and psychosocial needs as part of the patient care pathway.

The charity actively seeks to influence and support the work of clinicians and professionals in the many specialties that care for people who have disfiguring conditions as well as those in primary care.

An increasing number of health and social care professionals are now seeking to embed psycho-social interventions into their care as a crucial part of best practice and as an essential component to successful rehabilitation.

Changing Faces provides health and social care professionals with the resources, strategies and training programmes to enable teams to place the psycho-social care needs of patients at the centre of their practice.