We've been shortlisted for a top industry accolade Health Service Journal (HSJ) Partnership Awards.

Narrowly missing out on the top prize at last night’s ceremony, the award nomination for the trust was in partnership with Acorn Recovery Projects (ARP) for its work on introducing a peer support model into the Trust to alleviate pressures across its services, staff and service users. The project was a finalist in the Best Not For Profit Working in Partnership with the NHS category.

Acorn Recovery Projects, a charity providing a range of drug, alcohol, and mental health recovery services to individuals and their families, teamed up with the Trust to offer peer support staff with lived experience to help guide the best peer support model for our trust.

The partnership was born out of increasing Covid-19 pressures on Trust services. ARP offered direct support to our Mental Health Crisis Line and Home Treatment teams, which deal with service users with a range of urgent mental health issues, on a daily basis.

Associate Director for Nursing, Experience and Engagement, Paul Jebb said:

“Peer Support is essential within mental health care to ensure we empower people to focus on their recovery and give them hope for the future.

It’s been an incredibly challenging 18 months for all, so for the teams to be have been nominated for such a fantastic award is brilliant. Working in partnership is something that is at the heart of our organisation, and of true benefit to service users and carers."

Fylde Coast Community Mental Health Team service manager at LSCft said:

"Having people from Acorn Recovery Projects with lived experience working within my team, has enabled me to educate the staff on the value of bringing life experience into the care of our service users.

The team have been sharing this knowledge far and wide which has seen many requests to take this model even further. The Trust is also looking to lead the way by coproducing this initiative across more of our services.”