Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LPFT) provide care and treatment for a local population of some 718,800 people, as well as specialist services for people who live in other areas of the East Midlands.  We are focused on helping people towards recovery, enabling them to live well in their community as much as possible. We work closely with the local community to design and improve services, ensuring what we provide is best suited to our service-users, carers and other family members. We have around 2,500 members of staff across many disciplines of mental health, learning disability and social care, who provide the best possible care and support. Our purpose and vision is to support people to live well in their communities.

LPFT covers the entirety of Lincolnshire, a large and predominantly rural area. The very nature of the rural area impacts on the opportunities and health inequalities faced by people, the economy and on quality of life. There are challenges of delivering services in rural areas due to distance and dispersal, and the existing evidence base is often centred around urban areas as opposed to rural populations. Additionally, recruitment and translating the urban-centric evidence base to rural health care provision are key challenges.

• Above national average of older adults living in more deprived and isolated areas
• Digital inequalities and poverty affecting everything from access to education, healthcare, vaccinations
• Link between rurality, social deprivation and increased suicide rates
• Variations in health outcomes and inequalities across the county - almost a decade or more of difference in life expectancy between poorest and richest boroughs.  There are wide pockets of deprivation, social challenge and demographics: creating a range of inequalities often unique to a rural region
• Inequitable development, funding and access to healthcare services in more rural parts of the county for example the East Coast (access to A&E, teaching hospitals, voluntary services, public transport)  
• Workforce and recruitment/retention

Maintaining an identity and creating sustainable partnerships, when challenged with all of the above, becomes more significant and critical to organisational development.