The Trust intends to appoint a partner organisation to develop and implement a support and improvement programme for acute mental health services.

This programme would be aimed at working with staff and service users to identify, explore and implement innovative ways to sustain high quality in- patient services through a motivated, engaged and appropriately skilled and supported workforce. The focus of the project will be the staff and leaders working in our mental health acute care settings. The specific goals of the project are to work with our acute care staff, service users and others to coproduce action to understand and address the following five areas;

1. Explore how the trust can ensure that all staff working in acute care settings are provided with the necessary physical and emotional support (including personal and team training and development)to support them in their roles

2. Provide a sustainable structure for personal and professional growth which demonstrates the value of these staff and services to the trust

3. Explore the contemporary demands of acute care ward management and leadership and implement a systematic approach to nurturing and replenishing this talent into the future

4. To explore how the confidence, resilience and well being of acute care teams can be promoted and encouraged

5. Creating and sustaining positive relationships with other teams, services and stakeholders to improve care

The successful bidder will work with each of the nine individual mental health inpatient units across the county. It is expected that each bidder will demonstrate how they will also work with the one learning disability unit. There are approximately 275 staff working within these services, there are 133 beds.

The inpatient units are located across the county within each of the geographical localities. The successful bidder will be required to work from each of these locations. There are six localities across the county, Carlisle, Eden, Allerdale, Copeland, Furness and South Lakes. The mental health acute units operate from each of these localities and therefore the successful bidder would be required to travel extensively around the county as, for example, Carlisle is situated 70 miles from Furness.

The successful bidder will be expected to demonstrate clear improvements in staff morale and ways of working through improved patient experience/outcomes, improved staff attitudes and improved staff wellbeing and job satisfaction.