While more individuals are accessing mental health care than ever before and despite the sector's work to increase access and transform models of care within the resources available, there remains significant unmet need, pressures on services and challenges in delivering high quality, safe, effective care consistently across the country.
Critically, trusts from across the acute, mental health, community and ambulance sector have raised concerns about whether overall levels of funding for mental health services are enough and whether they are being appropriately prioritised locally and nationally, particularly services for individuals with severe and enduring mental illness. There is a growing perception of a waning political will and focus on addressing the systemic challenges facing the mental health sector and delivering the well-established principle of parity of esteem between mental and physical health care.
These issues are on top of longstanding, historic issues that the sector has been facing and have come to a head at a critical time: the new government is due to publish its 10-year health plan and conclude its first comprehensive spending review in the summer. Both provide a critical opportunity to secure the funding and focus the mental health sector requires to build on the work undertaken in recent years – and make further necessary improvements – to deliver sustainable, high-quality mental health services to the benefit of individuals and the wider system and society over the next decade.
Securing the right levels of national funding and focus for the mental health sector in upcoming strategic NHS decisions is also essential to supporting the breadth of mental health's role in delivering the three shifts (across treatment to prevention, hospital to community, and analogue to digital) and providing services to those with the most serious mental illnesses.
There is a need to go further and provide more clarity, coherence and alignment on what needs to be prioritised in the short to medium term to deliver high quality, sustainable mental health services in line with the government's three shifts (across treatment to prevention, hospital to community, and analogue to digital), and how to deliver what's needed in practice.
Areas that would benefit from further particular exploration include productivity and value for money, effectiveness and quality through the lens of the role of mental health within the three shifts that the government wants to make in health and care.
NHS Providers will be working over April and May to explore these areas further with trust leaders and stakeholders, and will share findings and recommendations with policymakers ahead of the comprehensive spending review concluding and the implementation of the 10-year health plan.