Level up logo .pngYoung people and families, Cheshire and Merseyside NHS-Led Provider Collaborative ‘Level Up’ went live Friday 1 October.

The innovative model for designing and delivering specialised mental health services is a partnership made up of a variety of 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 on 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.”

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. NHS-Led Provider Collaboratives will deliver care closer to home, invest in community services and drive improvements in patient outcomes and experience.

NHS-Led Provider Collaboratives are 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 with different organisations working closely together. 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 make improvements to local specialist services for people and their families.

The Provider Collaborative is working with people who use these services as well as 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

The ambition of NHS-Led Provider Collaboratives is to ensure that people with a mental health need who need care experience high quality, specialist care as close to home as appropriately possible and that care is connected to their community.

Provider Collaboratives are aiming to invest in specialist care in the community to help reduce hospital admissions, unless necessary, and to enable people to leave hospital when they are ready.

If you would like to know more about Provider Collaboratives please watch the short video below by NHS England.