- Having just undergone its first full evaluation, the Northamptonshire Mental Health Learning Disability Autism Collaborative (NMHLDAC) Programme and its outcome-based collaborative contract has been approved for continuation and expansion in phase two.
- It has centralised patient outcomes and experience, applying service user generated 'I' statements to every applicable service under the contract.
- It has also expanded Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) integration into its new place-based community mental health teams, acute hospital teams, and suicide prevention/ bereavement pathways, and is now working with social care to align triumvirate mental health and care teams around neighbourhoods.
- The long-term nature of the contract (five years with a two-year extension option) has given greater security to VCSE partners and the Mental Health Northants Collaboration (MHNC) has grown its membership with a range of new partners (including carer organisations, children and young people's charities and enterprises that specialise in suicide bereavement).
- The NMHLDAC has given Northamptonshire's VCSE sector an equal voice in the strategic planning of pathways, and deployment of financial resource. In return, the MHNC has provided Northamptonshire service users with greater choice, control and opportunity to receive health and care services on their own terms.
- The wider collaborative comprises partners from across police, ambulance, local authority, public health, primary care and acute hospital services – this has strengthened the overall understanding of service user experience, highlighting gaps and duplications across multiple pathways, and sets the stage for ambitious transformation plans in the coming years.
- The NMHLDAC Programme's next steps are to expand the scope of the outcome-based collaborative contract to include a greater proportion of the system's adult mental health investment, as well as starting to incorporate learning disability and autism services. Ultimately, the goal will be to expand the collaborative contract to cover the spectrum of mental health learning disability autism pathways overseen by the collaborative programme.