Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism Collaborative Programme

We want people of all ages who experience mental health problems, have learning disabilities and/or Autism to live healthy lives, be able to achieve their goals and be accepted and supported in the communities they live in.

Our Priorities

The role of the collaborative is to establish a core offer for mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity for the population of Humber and North Yorkshire, enabling integration with health and care services, at the local level, and provides specialist services at scale, to a population of over 1.7 million people.

We aim to improve services for people who experience poor mental health, people who have learning disabilities, people living with dementia and Autistic people of all ages. We are working towards ensuring that mental health problems, learning disabilities and Autism are given the same priority as physical health problems in the planning and delivery of local health and care services. In keeping with our broader aims and ambitions, we want to put in place programmes and systems that will help people to stay well and manage their conditions confidently.

The continuing growth in the demand on services is well known and that people are waiting far too long to be seen by a mental health service or to be assessed for Autism and/or ADHD; restrictive practices are increasing within inpatient settings, and there continues to be an evidential inequality in outcomes for neurodiverse people, people with a learning disability, and those with a mental health condition. Together with these challenges, there are significant differences and levels of need within geographical areas, including varying levels of deprivation, disparity in the number of years a person can expect to live in good health, and different levels of population density.

As we make a move from hospital to community, treatment to prevention and analogue to digital, we will work collaboratively to deliver more care at home or close to home, improving access, experience and outcome are crucial to healthier communities. Working across health and care will reduce fragmentation, poor communication and siloed working, seeing the lead to the integration of the NHS, local government, social care and partners becoming the norm (NHS England, 2025).

Over the next five years we will enable transformation both in the services we provide, and the way in which we provide these services, to better meet the needs of our populations and enhancing the productivity of the NHS. Our priorities for 2025-2030 are:

• Improve our understanding of the current and future population needs, meeting these needs and demonstrating impact through patient focussed outcomes.

• Support measures which reduce health inequalities, the future prevalence of mental illness, or intervenes early to prevent avoidable escalation of conditions.

• Support our neurodiverse population and those with a learning disability to access early intervention, support and adjustments they need.

• Support community mental health transformation and, where possible, integration with other forms of health and social care at neighbourhood level.

• Ensure that people with serious and enduring mental health conditions receive timely and high-quality support.

• Ensure sufficient inpatient and post-discharge support, that all admissions are purposeful, and last no longer than is clinically appropriate.

• Develop a system wide approach to workforce development, including medical workforce and reduce our reliance on agencies.

• Work with people of all ages with lived experience to coproduce the design, delivery and evaluation of services to ensure they meet the needs of our diverse communities.

Our Plan

For many years now, health and care organisations who deliver services in our region have been working increasingly closer together, through the development of partnership arrangements and our collaborative programme of work.

Our Collaborative aims to join up services to better support our patients and make the best use of the resources at our disposal. This approach has developed to the point that we now plan collaboratively across our six local places to work towards ensuring that Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism services are meeting the needs of our populations, are available to all who need them and that investment decisions are aligned to longer term strategic goals, supported by evidence-based needs.

To read about our achievements during 2023 – 2024, please read our annual report.

To read about our achievements during 2022 – 2023, please read our annual report.

To read about our achievements during 2021 – 2022, please read our annual report.

Our Work

We have key priority workstreams that will help us to deliver our vision and outcomes over the years to come. These priorities may flex over time as we begin to realise our ambitions and meet the potentially changing needs of our populations.

Our priority workstreams include:

• Autism and ADHD Pathways

• Children and Young People’s Mental Health

• Children and Young People’s Trauma Informed Care Programme

• Community Mental Health Transformation – including Severe Mental Illness (SMI) Physical Health Checks

• Dementia

• Individual Placement Support

• Inpatient Quality and Safety

• Learning Disabilities

• Perinatal and Maternal Mental Health

• Reducing Out of Area Placements

• Suicide Prevention