Living Well in Greater Manchester

Living Well is the Innovation Unit's tried and tested place-based approach to innovating in the mental health system. In addition to supporting three localities in Greater Manchester to adopt and adapt Living Well to their local context, I have been designing a number of pan-locality tools and structures to support their community mental health transformation.  

The person-centred approach I bring has supported localities to find meaningful ways to involve people with lived experience in their new mental health collaboratives. Through my facilitation, mixed groups of stakeholders are able to move forward with a shared ownership, understanding and vision for the service. I have also supported people in traditional leadership roles to work through blockers via a shared community of practice.

I have also developed a framework for evaluating progress towards metrics of importance to NHS funders, while also measuring softer, values-based growth and system change. 

An important outcome of this work is that people in positions of power empowered with empathetic understanding of service user needs. Old ways of working are being challenged and changed.

Prototyping teams were well prepared to tackle inequality and empowered to test and learn about the impact of their new ways of working.