The Commissioning and Integration Team supports LSCft and the lead provider collaborative for Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust specialised mental health.

We are accountable to LSCft and the lead provider for effective management of commissioning, delivery process, and the assurance of quality and mitigation of risk across the provider collaborative. This means that we can make low-level decisions on the day-to-day operations of the provider collaborative.

The team also supports the effective management of commissioned services and is an interface between the providers in the collaborative and the lead provider, alongside other stakeholders, including the Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (LSC ICB).

This video produced by NHS England explains what provider collaboratives are and what they aim to achieve for specialised mental health, learning disability and autism services.

Provider collaboratives have undergone several changes and developments since they were formed:

  • The NHS 10 Year Plan is currently undergoing transformation following public engagement.
  • In July 2022, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) closed and were replaced by Integrated Care Systems (ICSs). ISCs are partnerships of organisations that come together to plan and pay for health and care services to improve the lives of people who live and work in their area. Each ICS has two statutory elements, an Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) and Integrated Care Board (ICB).

You can read more about the next steps for specialised commissioning on the NHS England website.

As a commissioning team, we are responsible for assessing our population’s needs, purchasing services to meet these needs and then monitoring the services to ensure that the provider organisations are delivering high quality and cost-effective services. 


The services we are responsible for are:


• Adult secure services: adult low and medium secure mental illness, personality disorder, learning disability and autism services, working in partnership with the Priory, Elysium, and Cygnet healthcare.

• Children and Young Peoples Mental Health Service (CYPMHS): General adolescent unit (GAU), young people’s specialist eating disorders (ED), inpatient units, working in partnership with Priory healthcare for commissioned services and other regional lead provider collaborative (LPCs) in relation to more highly specialist care such as psychiatric intensive care units (PICU), low secure units (LSU) and learning disability units (LD).

• Forensic brain injuries: The LPC is responsible for quality oversight, performance and case management of Lancashire patients. NHS England retain financial oversight and commissioning responsibilities.

• Perinatal inpatient mental health service: Ribblemere mother and baby unit (MBU) and outreach services.

Case Managers play a vital pivotal role within specialised commissioned services, providing credible oversight and facilitation of care for patients. They support the commissioning function by:

  • Providing oversight of patient pathways, identifying potential/actual gaps in provision and barriers to progress
  • Involvement prior to admission with referrals pre and post assessment for specialised services – particularly in managing cases that are escalated e.g. escalation calls, liaison with potential providers (variable involvement across areas)
  • Listening to and talking with patients, their families and carers
  • Ensuring the voices of patients and their families are heard and acted upon
  • Monitoring and reviewing the quality and safety of provision
  • Observing providers in practice
  • Monitoring and reviewing quality information and local intelligence

The Commissioning and Integration Team, on behalf of the Lead Provider Collaborative, have delegated responsibility from NHS England for effective oversight and management of the quality assurance. Broadly speaking, there are three layers of quality assurance which are:

  • Day to day intelligence and quality surveillance. These are issues which the services escalate or are reported to case managers.
  • Routine surveillance, including contract review meetings, data and hard intelligence for example incidents, annual quality reviews of service.
  • External sources such as CQC information and reports; peer reviews; quality standards/ network reports.

The Commissioning and Integration Team oversee the quality and compliance of our Out of Area Providers. This is done a number of ways. Firstly, through achieving positive, open relationships with our Out of Area Providers (OAPs) providers to ensure mutual sharing of information. Secondly, through a process of formal contract review meetings (CRM) where performance and compliance data into issues such as incidents and complaints is discussed and reviewed.

Thirdly, the team conduct six monthly quality reviews at the OAPs sites, reviewing the environment, talking with colleagues and service users to understand what is going well, what is not going well and where things could be improved. From these quality reviews actions are recommended and monitored through the CRMs to monitor the completion of the agreed action. Lastly, the team maintain relationships with our own LSCft services to understand and then respond to any concerns that may be raised. The Commissioning and Integration Team produce a number of reports related to OAPs quality and performance which are up to Trust Board.

Our LPC partners are:

We also work with other provider collaboratives across North West England. These are: 

Specialised Mental Health Provider Collaborative Service strategy