Living Well Network Alliance

Overview

Lambeth Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Lambeth Council are looking to join with a group of providers to create the Living Well Network Alliance (LWN Alliance). This will be a group of 7-8 providers and commissioners who together will lead, co-ordinate and, in large part, deliver support and services for those experiencing mental health issues in Lambeth. The LWN Alliance will be responsible for the large majority of the adult mental health services in Lambeth, including the existing Living Well Network as well as all inpatient and community care. The LWN Alliance will be supported by an alliance contract, which is expected to be for a period of 7-10 years and which will go live in April 2018.

Progress to Date

Since the Collaborative was established in June 2010, commissioners, service users, carers and a wide range of mental health service providers in Lambeth have been working together to improve services for people experiencing mental health issues. We have seen extremely encouraging progress during this time. Informal collaborations between providers resulted in the formation of the Living Well Network, whilst more formal collaborative approaches in the form of alliance contracting have also been tested out with the Integrated Personalised Support Alliance (IPSA), with both initiatives delivering impressive results. We’ve shown that by working together, using an asset-based approach and harnessing a variety of expertise, we can provide effective, early support to a large number of people as well as significantly improve the lives of those with more complex conditions.

Drivers for Change

Despite the good progress, a number of significant challenges remain in Lambeth, such as high demand for services, lack of co-ordination between services and providers, financial pressures, healthcare inequalities and so on. We know that in order to address these and improve the experience and outcomes for users of mental health services in Lambeth, the system needs to continue to change and develop.

We’ve deliberately taken an informal approach initially, using pilots and smaller scale projects to test our ideas. Our recent experience of formal collaboration through alliance contracting has been very positive. We now want to build on the progress we have made so far and take up the opportunity to go further. This is why we are looking to establish the LWN Alliance, which will bring together a number of providers and commissioners to take a whole system view and plan and deliver services in Lambeth collectively.

Functions

The LWN Alliance will have a number of responsibilities within the mental health system in Lambeth, namely to:

  • Develop and expand early, personalised and holistic support in Lambeth
  • Co-ordinate care and drive integration across the system
  • Manage demand through primary prevention and reducing dependency and crises
  • Be the strategic leaders driving culture across all mental health services
  • Develop, organise and review the network of providers who make up the Living Well Network

Procurement

We will be running a procurement process in 2017 to identify the provider group to join with Lambeth Council and Lambeth CCG to form the LWN Alliance. The alliance contract will be for a period of 7-10 years and is expected to go live in April 2018.

More Information

For more information on the LWN Alliance proposal, please see read Our Plans for the Future booklet.