Growing gap between government ambitions for mental health and the reality of care on the frontline

07 July 2017

NHS Providers has warned that the prime minister’s welcome commitment to tackling long-standing injustices faced by people with mental health problems is being undermined.

Its report, The State of the NHS Provider Sector, concludes that the impact of rapidly rising demand, workforce shortages and the failure of funding to get through to the frontline means core mental health services are being overwhelmed.

The findings are based – in part – on the largest regular survey of NHS trust chairs and chief executives, which drew responses from nearly two thirds of trusts that provide mental health services and more than half of all NHS trusts in England.

The impact of rapidly rising demand, workforce shortages and the failure of funding to get through to the frontline means core mental health services are being overwhelmed.

The report sets out how the provider sector is performing, the challenges trusts are facing, and the support they need as we face another five years of constrained funding and rapidly rising demand. Alongside the survey it presents other published data, together with extensive analysis and commentary.

The centrepiece of the report is mental health - a critical area of care for the NHS and other public services, as well as being a growing concern for wider society. The report acknowledges the strong and welcome commitment from the top of government to address long-standing inequalities in care for people with mental health needs. This is starting to enable better service provision in the targeted areas. However trust leaders say the position of core mental health services is deteriorating.

Findings from a survey of NHS mental health trust chairs and chief executives show:

The report goes on to call for:

Director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery, said:

“These concerns point to a growing gap between the government’s welcome ambition for the care of people with mental health needs and the reality of services they are receiving on the front line.

“In some cases, core mental health service provision by mental health trusts is actually getting worse.

“NHS mental health trust leaders from up and down the country have told us how concerned they are about the future sustainability of services. Over 70% of mental health leaders told us that they expect demand for services overall to grow. When we look at child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and mental health crisis care that figure was 90%.

“Having the right staff, with the right skills in the right place is the only way to improve mental health services on the ground. But mental health trust leaders are struggling to find sufficient staff to deliver their current services, let alone find new staff to extend, transform or innovate services. And too often trust leaders report that any extra funding is just used to fill existing gaps or to manage current demand, not improve service quality or access.  Unless action is taken to address these areas of concern then the government’s ambitions for transforming mental health care will not be met.

Unless action is taken to address these areas of concern then the government’s ambitions for transforming mental health care will not be met.

”We need to develop ways to ensure that money committed for mental health gets through to the NHS front line and is spent effectively on quality services. Second - we must be realistic in the way we respond to growing demand, recognising that societal pressures are increasing the need for mental health services. And third -  worries over staffing gaps revealed in the survey once again underline the urgency for a proper comprehensive workforce strategy.”

The report also assesses the four wider themes addressed in the inaugural The State of the NHS Provider Sector report last November: quality and patient access, finance, workforce and transformation. Here too, it combines our own analysis and commentary, published data and the views of trust leaders drawn from a survey:

The report goes on to call for:

Notes

43 chairs and chief executives from 37 mental health trusts responded to the survey. This represents nearly two thirds (62%) of trusts that provide mental health services

For the wider findings, we had responses from 158 chairs and chief executives from 125 NHS trusts. This covers more than half (54%) of all trusts. All regions and trust types were well represented.

 

Read our full State of the NHS provider sector report online 

See our open letter published in the Guardian and co-signed by other mental health organisations