- Population: 2.4 million
- Places: Bradford, Calderdale, Leeds, Kirklees, Wakefield
- Trusts: Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust, South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Established formally in 2018, the West Yorkshire Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism (WY MHLDA) Collaborative consists of four mental health trusts across West Yorkshire. It works towards the ambition of long-term service transformation and improvements for people in West Yorkshire.
This case study is based on conversations held with members of the collaborative core team:
- Keir Shillaker, programme director
- Sara Munro, the collaborative's senior responsible officer (SRO) and chief executive of Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
- Emma Pearce, consultant in public health
The case study covers the evolution of collaborative and partnership working, including aims and objectives, key roles and relationships, and supporting infrastructure and workstreams. It also covers work on health inequalities, and some of the benefits and impact they're realising for patients.
Overview
The WY MHLDA Collaborative was formally established in 2018 after a period of informal working between the trust partner organisations on service improvements across a defined number of workstreams, including crisis and emergency care pathways.
Their decision to formalise their collaboration was influenced by the success of neighbouring acute provider collaborative, the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT).
The mental health trusts decided to come together to look at what they could do differently as a group of providers working together. At the same time, conversations were also being had with NHS England more generally around new models of care for mental health services, and both factors contributed to the formalisation of the collaborative and the creation of six NHS-led provider collaboratives involving NHS trusts and independent sector providers.
The collaborative leadership team are determined to only do things on a West Yorkshire scale when it adds value to do so. They recognise, for example, that community mental health transformation (CMHT) is about re-engineering the front door from primary to secondary care and the work is done for the most part at place level. Yet there is value in supporting and coordinating some work on CMHT on a West Yorkshire footprint.
The collaborative has two key service improvement ambitions:
- Service users should be cared for in the least restrictive environment possible with individuals being supported as close to home and carers as possible.
- Unnecessary variation in outcomes or experiences for service users should be minimised.