- The West Yorkshire Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism Collaborative (WY MHLDA) was formally established in 2018 after a period of informal working between the trust partner organisations.
- 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 collaborative is a key part of the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership and shares the aim to reduce the gap in life expectancy between people with mental health conditions, learning disabilities and/or autism and the rest of the population. All of the providers in the partnership contribute to this ambition.
- A set of service change and transformation aims are in place as well as some wider objectives in terms of improvements for its service users and supporting the sharing of best practice to meet the needs of the West Yorkshire population.
- The collaborative uses a formal committee in common structure which sits below the four participating trust boards to discharge the functions that the providers agree that they want to collaborate on.
- The collaborative has a wide range of workstreams in place across the differing priorities. Some are accountability responsibilities through lead providers reporting into the committee in common, others are leadership and coordination responsibilities, reporting into the WY MHLDA partnership board, and narrowing the focus can be a challenge.
- A WY MHLDA partnership board is also in place and is driven by the provider collaborative but has a broad membership with representatives from each Place and across the system, including local authorities, NHS England and the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector.
- The collaborative is run by a small core team which is hosted by Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust on behalf of the providers and wider integrated care board (ICB) and funded 60% by the ICB and 40% by the trusts.
- One key workstream for the collaborative is their in-depth work on wider determinants and inequalities. Uniquely, the collaborative has recruited a consultant in public health with a clinical background who now sits in the senior leadership team.
- The collaborative has seen tangible benefits to patients since its inception, such as the reduction in out of area placements for some specialised services, but there are also many examples of cultural changes and idea sharing taking place across the system which can be harder to measure.
- VCSE partners now have a stronger voice and many of the workstream senior responsible owners (SROs) are emerging from the VCSE sector to ensure that leadership for the transformation agenda is shared across all partners as they work together to deliver measurable improvements in outcomes.