About us

The Living Well UK programme (2018-22) created new systems of community mental health support across the UK, inspired by a model developed in Lambeth, South London. The programme was awarded £3.4 million from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK, to support new local partnerships in Edinburgh, Luton, Salford, and Tameside & Glossop that worked to develop their own version of a Living Well system.

The programme aimed to:

Significantly improve mental health outcomes for people who need help by refocusing the system around the person
Widen access to preventative and person-centred care and support by co-designing new multidisciplinary teams
Develop system leadership and collaboration between different stakeholders necessary to drive radical change by facilitating spaces for leaders to build shared purpose around local visions for change
Give people confidence to imagine, test and take risks to explore and fulfil new possibilities - for example by adopting and adapting proven new solutions from elsewhere (“other people have done this, so we can too”).
Create a national movement for new models of community-based mental health services that influences national policy and service provision by showcasing the work and sharing learning.

Since the programme started in 2018, the movement has grown, and Innovation Unit is now supporting Joined Up Care Derbyshire, Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership and York’s Connecting our City Partnership to adapt and adopt Living Well systems. This is helping them achieve NHS England’s policy ambitions to transform community mental health services, in line with the 2019 Community Mental Health Framework for Adults and Older Adults.

Support for our places has centred on:

Movement building

Enabling citizens and professionals to forge a powerful shared vision for change and work side by side and non-hierarchically

Co-design and
co-production

Ensuring that system change is built out of the voice of lived experience

Story gathering
and storytelling

Reconnecting practitioners and leaders emotionally to why they work in mental health in the first place

Prototyping
(rather than ‘piloting’)

Enabling fast-paced testing, learning and service development, and to avoid ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ thinking in complex systems where there is often no easy answer

Growing

Starting by working in one neighbourhood and growing to whole cities, localities and Integrated Care Systems.

Practice leadership

Blending the best of clinical and social models and to recognise that real transformation happens in the work between professionals and between them and people using services.

Collaborative leadership

Across organisations and sectors – creating leadership communities based on dialogue and relationships.

The programme has been independently evaluated by Cordis Bright, who found clear evidence that Living Well has supported people to make progress towards improved mental health and quality of life.

Read the full Evaluation Report

Innovation Unit will publish a systems change learning report in January 2023, based on our experience of working across multiple health and care systems in the UK.