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Truly shifting community mental health systems is difficult work, but it is more important now than ever.
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18 million working days are lost to mental ill health each year.
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Mental health ill health costs equated to double the NHS’s entire budget in 2022 (£153BN).
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Over the last 5 years there has been a 45% increase in the number of people in contact with secondary mental health services.
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40% of people are waiting too long for care.
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There is a vacancy rate across the mental health sector of 9.9%.
We are inspired by mental health models like Living Well Lambeth and Trieste, which enable a holistic, person-led approach to supporting people. These approaches enable practitioners to work in a way that prioritises the most important parts of care. This allows them to support more people, collaborate with local communities to enhance support offerings, and shift from gatekeeping to an open-door approach that provides support whenever and wherever it’s needed, enabling a shift to prevention.
We have supported a number of places across the UK to transform their systems including Lambeth, 10 localities of Greater Manchester, York, Luton, Derbyshire and Edinburgh
Some of our most important impact has come from our Living Well UK programme, where our sites have supported people to progress towards their life goals, improved people’s quality of life, reduced waiting times and run cost effective systems.
For example, in Salford Living Well in 2025:
- 94% of staff would recommend their organisations as a place to work.
- 100% of people agreed or strongly agreed that the support they received has improved their wellbeing.
Our approach
1. Connecting systems
Creating genuinely collaborative systems, where NHS trusts, Local Authorities and VCSFE organisations shape their vision and make decisions together
"I can honestly say we would never have been able to do what we did had we not had IU alongside us bringing that external accountability, that drive and that different thinking."
Living Well Partner
Creating genuinely collaborative systems, where NHS trusts, Local Authorities and VCSFE organisations shape their vision and make decisions together
"I can honestly say we would never have been able to do what we did had we not had IU alongside us bringing that external accountability, that drive and that different thinking."
Living Well Partner
2. Co-designing with people
We work with communities, people with lived experience and practitioners to create an approach that works for their place and sustain and embed co-design and learning approaches.
“IU’s insightful approaches have allowed us to participate in a safe, well-held space within which we could challenge our assumptions and approaches in relation to lived experience involvement and co-production.”
Living Well Partner
We work with communities, people with lived experience and practitioners to create an approach that works for their place and sustain and embed co-design and learning approaches.
“IU’s insightful approaches have allowed us to participate in a safe, well-held space within which we could challenge our assumptions and approaches in relation to lived experience involvement and co-production.”
Living Well Partner
3. Shifting practice
Support multidisciplinary teams and organisations to develop shared person centred, holistic practice that considers the wider determinants of mental wellbeing, working closely with community offers.
“We’re kind of asking the staff to work in a really different way and that’s a huge cultural shift, but a lot of the staff who are now doing that are embracing that and absolutely seeing the benefits in the wider network.”
Living Well Partner
Support multidisciplinary teams and organisations to develop shared person centred, holistic practice that considers the wider determinants of mental wellbeing, working closely with community offers.
“We’re kind of asking the staff to work in a really different way and that’s a huge cultural shift, but a lot of the staff who are now doing that are embracing that and absolutely seeing the benefits in the wider network.”
Living Well Partner
How we can help you
Improving outcomes for people in your area and staff well-being, satisfaction and retention by:
- Scaling and spreading innovative models which make better use of existing resource and skills in your place
- Embedding learning and coproduction into ways of working at every level
- Supporting local places to create and uphold jointly owned vision and values
- Establishing conditions in local places that encourage collaboration, learning, and creativity across leaders and teams
- Developing multidisciplinary teams with a strong sense of identity and purpose
- Creating shared practice and ways of working across disciplines, organisations and local systems
