Help us decide how we can do more to support people experiencing mental health challenges to live well in their communities

What we see as our role in the future

As part of discussions with our Board of Directors and Council of Governors around our strategy to date, this is how we wish to position ourselves as an organisation in the future.

‘LPFT will act as the system leader and custodian of mental health care in Lincolnshire, taking responsibility for the mental health and mental wellbeing of the population.

We will also work in partnership with others to protect the interests and improve the lives of those with dementia, those with learning disabilities and autistic people across the county’.

 

We want to both:

• Provide high quality, specialist mental health, dementia, learning disability and autism services to the county

​​​​​​​and

Improve the mental wellbeing of the communities we serve.
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Delivering outstanding clinical care

As part of looking at our role in the future we remain committed to continuing to work on:

Delivering outstanding clinical care

Continuously improving the quality of our services, employing outstanding people across the organisation and making the best use of what resources we have. 

What we know about our current services

• We have long waiting times for some services.  
• Too many people with a learning disability and/or autism are in hospital unnecessarily.
• Too many people are having to go out of Lincolnshire for hospital care.
• The effectiveness of our services is not always consistently understood.
• There is a lack of consistent specialist provision across county (for example limited urgent care support on the east coast).
• A lack of clarity over the model of care and what this means for our patients and staff.
• Not all our teams are as efficient and productive as they could be.
• Our patients and staff don’t always feel safe.    

We want to use this piece of work to help inform our long-term operational plan and how our specialist healthcare services will deliver things in the future.

What is a Healthy Population?

In our strategy we set out some high level ambitions for what we want to do to support a healthy population in Lincolnshire. You can read what these are by using this link.

One of the main areas is that we want to help address the wider factors that can impact someone's mental health, as we know that by doing this, people are less likely to need specialist support in the future and able to improve people's lives.

We want to:

• Help address health inequalities for those with severe mental illness, dementia, a learning disability and our autistic community 
• Improving people’s life chances
• Supporting the economic development of our communities 
• Reducing demand on specialist secondary care services.
   

What are the wider factors that can impact someone's mental health and wellbeing?

There are many factors that can affect someone's mental health and wellbeing, that aren't connected to the specialist services and support people receive.

“While the quality of health services is important, it makes a much smaller difference to people’s overall health than things like income, employment and housing. Well-established models suggest that clinical care accounts for 20% of health outcomes while social and economic factors and physical environment together make up 50%”.
Dame Clare Moriarty, Citizens Advice (2023).

This could include:

• Housing and accommodation 
• Education and skills
• Employment and meaningful occupation (like volunteering)
• Family and social support
• Income
• Community safety

We know nationally for the communities we serve that some of these factors disproportionately affect people who use our services.

• 75% unemployment for those with serious mental illness, when compared to 4.1% in general population.
• Only 3 in 10 autistic adults have any kind of employment
• There is a lack of suitable supported housing
• Our service users can have a lower life expectancy
  • 6-year lower life expectancy for autistic people.
  • 17-year lower life expectancy for those with a learning disability 
  • 15-year lower life expectancy for those with serious mental illness
• In Lincolnshire we have a higher than average suicide rate in our local community

Moving from strategy into practice - a new way of operating

As part of potential new ways of working, the Trust is focusing on two main areas of delivery

• Continuing to provide high quality specialist mental health, dementia, learning disability services to the county.
• Improving the mental wellbeing of the communities we serve by helping to address the wider determinants of health.

Specialist service delivery

We are the principal provider of specialist community and inpatient mental health care in Lincolnshire. We also provide other specialist dementia, learning disabilities and autism services.

In our new way of working we want the following:

• Our services to provide outstanding quality.
• We want clear and understood model(s) of care. 
• We want to be able to measure our impact (access/experience/outcomes).
• We want to provide care close to home (reduce out of area).
• We want to be continuously improving.

Addressing wider determinants of health

We could change how we deliver our support services to offer additional opportunities for people with lived experience:

• This could include offering opportunities to support employment in projects we run, such as grounds and garden maintenance, window cleaning, maintenance or food production.
• We could work with partners, or step in and support our service users with housing, employment or community care support.
• We could expand some of our existing non-clinical services such as the Recovery College to support skills development.
• We could go further and set up local businesses that could not only generate an income for the Trust, but support the economic development of our local communities and provide employment for people with lived experience. (this is a model used elsewhere in the country).

There are lots of ways we could achieve our ambitions and to do this we need to continue to work in partnership with our local stakeholders, but may also consider what may be missing and contract with others to deliver something new.