Mersey Care’s Strategy Team is led by Louise Edwards, Executive Director of Strategy, Commissioning and Partnerships. The team’s purpose is to set the strategic direction for Mersey Care and ensure this reflects the needs of our population. We capture this in our annual operational plan which is underpinned with robust contracts, partnerships and relationships across Place (the 6 local authority areas that Mersey Care works in) and Cheshire and Merseyside (referred to as the system).
The Strategy Team leads the development of Mersey Care’s Strategy; the long term roadmap for Mersey Care in response to our long term challenges. Our Strategy sets out our vision to strive for perfect, whole person care that helps people live happier, healthier lives. Each year, we produce an Operational Plan which sets out our annual priorities to move us closer to achieving our Strategy. We engage with stakeholders across the Trust and use data and insights to produce the Operational Plan which describes our objectives and actions relating to our services, our people, our resources and our future. The Operational Plan also sets out the measures that we will use to monitor our progress in delivering our plans and priorities.
Mersey Care is the Lead Provider in the Cheshire and Mersey Adult Secure Lead Provider Collaborative. This means the Trust has contractual and financial oversight for all adult low and medium secure services across Cheshire and Merseyside, including quality assurance of the services from 1st April 2022, with a value of £56.4m. We are working in partnership with other providers to manage local low and medium secure services in an efficient and consistent way to improve outcomes for service users.
Mersey Care is using data and intelligence to understand our population health needs and design services which intervene earlier to improve access to care, outcomes and the overall patient experience - making every contact count across the breadth of Mersey Care services. We are also using our strategic analytics expertise to help address strategic challenges which are felt across the health and care system that Mersey Care is part of.
Mersey Care alone cannot address the deep-rooted health and care needs in the population we serve. We must work with other organisations if we are to deliver our aspiration for prevention and care co-ordination. We are working in partnership with the six Places (local authority areas) in which we operate (Halton, Knowsley, St Helens, Warrington, Liverpool, and Sefton). As a leading provider of services across Cheshire and Merseyside, Mersey Care is also working in partnership with NHS Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board (ICB). Mersey Care is also currently working with other providers in Cheshire and Merseyside to establish a business case for the formal collaboration of providers of mental health, learning disability and community services in order that we can tackle the complex challenges we face together by working at scale.
The Contracts Team is responsible for all the Trust’s income and expenditure contracts for health services which total over £500m. The key purposes of the team are:
- To ensure income and expenditure contracts for services (mainly provision of healthcare) are in place with third parties.
- To ensure that the trust meets its governance requirements in relation to contracts.
- To build and sustain relationships with commissioners and sub-contractors
- To provide support to operational divisions.
- To ensure that contracts reflect the trust’s strategy.
Louise Edwards, Executive Director of Strategy, Commissioning and Partnerships – Louise
Wes Baker, Director of Strategic Analytics, Economics and Population Health Management – Wesam
Helen Bennett, Deputy Director Strategic Planning and Intelligence – Helen
Teresa Clarke, Head of Commissioning – Teresa
Tim Mansfield, Strategic Contracts Manager – Timothy
Leigh Thompson, Director of Strategic Partnerships – Leigh