County Durham Mental Health and Wellbeing Alliance

County Durham is developing a proposal for a different way of working with our communities and delivering interventions, at a locality place-based level. With this in mind we are seeking a group of organisations to work with us in an Alliance. The aim of the Alliance is to co-produce, co-ordinate and provide a range of support services for people with mental health needs. The Alliance will provide support to people to become independent and, where possible, prevent the need for social care services along with support to step down from services, by providing the right support at the right time. The service will need to promote wellbeing as a concept to individuals in order to build resilience and help keep individuals mentally, emotionally, and physically well. The service should sign-post or support individuals to take part in activities that promote wellbeing. The Alliance will include the providers and commissioners and will help improve access to information and support, remove the barriers between services and departments, improve and strengthen partnership working and further integrate care and health services. The proposed funding will be circa £2.3m annually, and it is hoped that this can be maintained during the life of the contract, however, this is reliant on national fiscal policy and local circumstances.