Publish date: 18 December 2025
On 2 December, our consultants came together for an away day focused on collaboration, service improvement and shaping the future of mental health care. The session aimed to:
- Connect and share perspectives across services
- Acknowledge the current context of high demand and clinical complexities
- Define our desired future: delivering the best mental health care as one team
- Identify opportunities for collaboration and agree on next steps.
Themes from the day included:
- Integration and standardisation - Plans to consolidate services for seamless care, reduce duplication and improve resource management
- Urgent care improvements - Data driven insights and person centred pathways to reduce emergency care visits and improve crisis response
- Community mental health transformation - Moving toward neighbourhood models, personalised care plans and stronger partnerships with social care and voluntary sectors
- Inpatient service redesign - Enhancing privacy, therapeutic environments and tackling workforce challenges.
Consultants discussed practical steps to improve:
- Interfaces and thresholds between primary and secondary care
- Collaboration across teams (community mental health, crisis resolution home treatment, inpatient) with better discharge summaries and shared service user discussions
- System wide integration, recognising we’re one service, not competing services
- Reducing bureaucracy and improving communication among senior clinicians.
Our priorities for the future include:
- Waiting times and access improvements
- Physical health monitoring
- Workforce strategy focused on attract, train, retain and reform
- Continued transformation of community services.
Next steps
A high level action plan will be developed with consultant commitment to ongoing collaboration. Regular updates will follow. To share your ideas for improvement, email Mark.swan@merseycare.nhs.uk