Young people and families, Cheshire and Merseyside NHS-Led Provider Collaborative ‘Level Up’
Level Up, Cheshire and Merseyside, Young People and Families, Lead Provider Collaborative is a partnership of various NHS and independent sector providers working together to drive innovation and creativity in offering truly person-centred care.
At the heart of Level Up is the Expert by Experience and Community Champion Programmes aimed at identifying barriers to healthcare and shaping mental health services across the region.
What is Level Up?
The innovative model for designing and delivering specialised mental health services is a partnership made up of various NHS and independent sector providers who are working together to drive innovation and creativity in offering truly person-centred care.
- NHS Lead: Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
- NHS Providers: Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
- Independent Sector Providers: Priory Healthcare and Cygnet Health Care
NHS-led provider collaboratives will also bring much-needed focus to tackling inequalities for their local population and increasing the voice of lived experience in improving the quality of care provided.
Dr Fiona Pender, Level Up Strategic Clinical Advisor, said: “The launch of Level Up for Cheshire and Merseyside is really exciting as we’re now able to start sharing more details about the work we’ve been doing with partners around our new care model.
“The new model is about providing care closer to home and ensuring the care and treatment they would have received in hospital will be delivered in their community.“Level Up is focused on ensuring that all services across Cheshire and Merseyside providing Tier 4 Children and Adolescent Mental Specialist Health Services are working closely together to provide the best possible outcome to young people who access the services and their carers/families.”
“The name and identity has been co-produced with Young People, and the Provider Collaborative will continue to engage with young people and families to ensure they are involved in every step of the Provider Collaborative. To help ensure this, Level Up is working with Young Minds and Inspire, Motivate, Overcome (IMO), to inform our experts by experience programme.”
What are provider collaboratives?
NHS-Led Provider Collaboratives mark a new era for specialised mental health, building on the success of New Care Models for tertiary mental health services. They will deliver care closer to home, invest in community services and drive improvements in patient outcomes and experience. They’re a new way of planning and providing specialist mental health, learning disability and autism services.
The Provider Collaboratives aim to change the way services are provided by working closely together with different organisations. This means that services will be provided closer to home and, as much as possible, out of hospital.
The Lead Provider, in this case Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, is working with other providers to improve local specialist services for people and their families.
The Provider Collaborative is working with people who use these services and people who deliver these services to plan what needs to change in the future.
There are key principles which underpin the Provider Collaborative model:
- Experts by experience and clinicians leading improvements in care pathways
- Collaboration between Providers and across local systems
- Managing resources across the collaborative to make sure that money is spent on support for people at or close to home and help make sure that people don’t go into hospital when they don’t need to.
- Working with people and groups locally, including people from the voluntary and community sectors.
- Improvements in quality, patient experience and patient outcomes driving change.
What do NHS-led provider collaborations mean for people locally?
NHS-Led Provider Collaboratives aims to ensure that people with mental health needs experience high-quality, specialist care as close to home as possible. That care is connected to their community.
Provider Collaboratives aim to invest in specialist care in the community to help reduce hospital admissions unless necessary and enable people to leave the hospital when they are ready.
If you want to know more about Provider Collaboratives, please watch the short video below by NHS England.