Night District Nursing Service marks 30 years of overnight community care
The Night District Nursing Service is celebrating its 30th anniversary this winter (November 2025), marking three decades of providing vital overnight care to patients across Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster.
One of the first Night District Nursing Services in the country, founded in 1995 by District Nurse Roz Irvine, the service was created to address a gap in care after services ended at 8pm. Following six months of planning, the team launched from Joan Bartlett Nursing Home in Kensington, with just one nurse and one healthcare assistant per night. From the outset, they provided essential overnight interventions including palliative care, enteral feeding, IV antibiotics and urgent response visits to help patients remain safe at home and avoid unnecessary hospital admissions.
The service has constantly evolved to reflect major changes in the NHS and community healthcare. Originally reliant on pagers, paper records and switchboard referrals, the team is now fully embedded within an integrated urgent and community care system. After relocating to St Charles Centre for Health in North Kensington in 2007, co-locating with out-of-hours GP services strengthened multidisciplinary working and improved overnight care pathways.
A major expansion followed in 2012, when Westminster’s overnight rapid response function was incorporated into the service, doubling both team size and geographical coverage. This reflected the NHS’s long-term plan strategic shift towards delivering more care closer to home, reducing avoidable hospital admissions and supporting urgent care reform.
Today, the service operates using digital patient records, mobile working technology, electronic rostering, GPS-enabled hybrid fleet vehicles and real-time communication tools. These developments support the NHS 10 Year Plan’s commitment to digital transformation, improving staff efficiency, patient safety and continuity of care across 24-hour services.
Leadership has also evolved over time. Following Roz Irvine’s retirement in 2012, Lorraine Smith, Night District Nurse Team Lead led the team through a period of organisational change and the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The service is now led by Sam Graham and Alex Parting, Night District Nurses Team Leads, based within the Urgent Care Centre at St Charles, continuing to align night services with wider urgent and community care priorities.
The team has a strong history of staff loyalty, with many members serving over 20 years. Roz was, and remains, incredibly passionate about the Night Service and was well known for attending various A&E departments at night trying to redirect patients. In 2011, her efforts were rewarded with the Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother’s Award for outstanding service from The Queen’s Institute of Community Nursing – in recognition of an exceptional contribution made to individual care of patients in the community, to the nursing profession through teaching and personal example and to the body of knowledge through dedicated practice and shared experience. Roz, now living a quiet retirement in West Sussex remains an avid supporter of the service describing it as “the best job in the world and with the best staff ever.”
In January 2025, the last original team member, Josephine Wilson-Cole District Nurse, retired after an exceptional 53-year career in the NHS.
Navneet Willoughby, Divisional Director of Operations at CLCH, said: “For 30 years, the Inner Northwest Night District Nursing Service has delivered compassionate, high-quality care to some of our most vulnerable patients, often when they need it most. Their ability to adapt to changing patient needs, new technologies and evolving NHS priorities while maintaining a strong patient focus is a real testament to the value of community nursing.
“As the NHS continues to progress its 10 Year Plan ambitions around community care, prevention and urgent care reform, the Night District Nursing Service remains a vital part of CLCH’s contribution to supporting people to stay well and safe at home overnight.”
