Improving our care services – our ten year plan

We have set out a ten-year ambition to improve the care we provide to the hundreds of thousands of people who receive mental health, learning disabilities and neurodiversity services every year from our Trust.

Our Care Services Strategic Plan looks at how Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LYPFT) provides care now, what is working well and where we could make it even better.

LYPFT currently receives around £121 million a year to deliver its 39 front line services (which we call care services). Most of the communities we serve are in Leeds, but we also provide services across West and North Yorkshire, as well as the North of England in some cases. We do this with around 3,000 staff and over 100 volunteers, in both inpatient and community settings, across 65 sites.

Joanna Forster Adams, Chief Operating Officer at LYPFT, said: “This plan presents a bold and exciting vision for improving the care we provide to the communities we serve. We know by making positive changes in the way we do things now we can set a course for improved care and experiences for our services users in the years to come.

“People are at the heart of everything we do. That includes our service users, our staff and our partners who we deliver care alongside. We’ve worked with many of them to produce our new ten-year plan which I am very proud of.

“It’s not just about improving how we deliver care at LYPFT. Our ambitions focus on tackling wider health inequalities, improving access to those who find it harder to engage, improve people’s experiences of LYPFT and their physical health too.

“The plan also sets out scenarios if we ‘do nothing’ or continue what we’re doing now and make no change. This will mean we’ll need more inpatient beds to cope with people who are not getting the services they need close to home, poorer outcomes for service users, and represent a poor use of precious NHS resources.

“For example, we currently have 407 inpatient beds. If we ‘do nothing’ we anticipate we’ll need between 518 and 536 beds by the year 2036 to cope with demand. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We know that our service users want the services they need, be they NHS or otherwise, where its most convenient for them to access. That tends to be close to home, and sometimes within their homes.

“We already have a strong commitment to involving people with lived experience in improving our services. Our care services should be guided by those who have direct experience of them and this plan sets out that vision.

“I look forward to working with staff, partners and those with lived experience to deliver our ten-year ambition.”

Three drivers for change

Through speaking with service users, carers and staff, we have identified three important drivers for change. These are summarised below.

1. 1. More people will need mental health care and support in future

We know that the populations we serve are changing. For example, in future, there will be more older people and fewer working age people living in Leeds. This means we can expect higher demand for our older people’s mental health services, such as care and support for dementia.

We expect that more people, across all ages, will experience mental health and wellbeing challenges over the next five or more years due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. This will mean more people requiring our support. We also must consider potential unknown demand for our services and unmet need. For example, we may not know about the mental health needs of more vulnerable people and communities who may experience poorer access to healthcare than others.

2. Our services are already under pressure and some are not future proof

We know our staff are under pressure to provide more care to more people, some of whom have complex care needs. We also know that there are some areas in our services that should improve to better support staff to provide great care, and to improve outcomes for people who use our services.

As more people will need mental health care and support in future, we must change our services so that we can respond to higher demand and continue to provide great care. The changes we make should be ‘future proof’ so that our services are sustainable over the long term.

3. Our care services must change to deliver on national and local strategies

It is important that our plan aligns with other mental health strategies so that our services deliver on national and local priorities.

This includes the NHS Long Term Plan which includes many commitments for mental health, including more mental health care being offered in the community and less care provided in hospital settings. Our future care services should be developed in line with this. Our local ‘place’ (Leeds) and Integrated Care Systems (West Yorkshire, and Humber Coast & Vale) also have defined priorities for mental health and we have a role to play in achieving these as a key provider of mental health across these footprints.

How we want to make positive change – our four focus areas

1. 1. Firstly, we want to co-create and co-deliver care services with people who have lived experience. Our care services should be led together with people who have experience of using our services. We want to contribute to our local economy through wider skills development and employment opportunities for people and we want to lead continuous co-production of care services with our communities and citizens.

2. Secondly, we want to collaborate with our partners to understand our populations and provide proactive integrated care. We need to fully understand who our partners are and create the right environments to work with them. We want to stay informed about our populations and their holistic care needs so we can proactively support people. And we want to co-design and co-deliver proactive integrated care and support with our partners.

3. Thirdly, we want to provide high quality, equitable and sustainable care services. Our care services should have the appropriate conditions to allow for the consistent delivery of safe, reliable and effective care. They should deliver equitable access, experience and outcomes. And they should be clinically, financially and environmentally sustainable, supported by modern digital technology and good quality estates.

4. Finally, our staff are our greatest asset and without them we could not deliver anything. Therefore, we must have a sustainable, healthy and engaged workforce who we fully support to be happy and healthy at work. And we know happy and healthy staff deliver better patient care.

Read the Trust’s Care Services Strategic Plan on our website.

Page last updated: 9th Mar 2026 4:23pm