MH FINANCE – HFMA’s Mental Health Faculty
Welcome to MH FINANCE, the Associations Mental Health Faculty.
HFMA’s growing Faculty functions are sub-sectors of the Association that offer education, influencing and networking opportunities as well as practical and technical knowledge. The highly successful and influential FT FINANCE is the first of these faculties to be developed, and it is hoped that the Mental Health Faculty will prove equally influential.
MH FINANCE is a network of trusts who have common interest, and can share experience and expertise, and want to use their combined numbers to try and influence thought and policy in the sector. The Faculty aims to support and represent the interests of finance professionals in organisations delivering mental health and leading disability services and provides an opportunity to work on solutions for common issues.
If your organisation is a member of the Faculty you should be able to view everything in this area of the website including the forum and documents. If your trust is not a member and you would like information on joining please contact Kamal Babra at kamal.babra@hfma.org.uk or on 0117 938 8991. Membership form available for download here.
The programme is developed under the guidance of a steering group consisting of members from mental health trust from across the county and its activities are devised directly from input from the membership. The steering group have initially outlined four key roles for the group:
- networking and linking
- influencing
- being solution focussed
- and producing deliverables
The group will undertake a work programme and is already embarking on a number of key meetings with individuals from within the Department of Health in order to focus our influencing effort in mental health services. The Faculty plans to hold a number of meetings and event throughout the year including:
MH FINANCE Directors’ Forum
The Directors’ Forum is designed to be a high level briefing for Directors on topics of particular significance to organizations providing mental health services, but it also offers the important opportunity for networking. This gathering of individuals will meet twice a year, will operates under Chatham House rule, and the number and level of attendees will be restricted in order to maintain the intimate nature of the gathering. The likes of Kathryn Tyson, Prof Louis Appleby, Bob Alexander and Sir Roy Lilley have already addressed this forum. Membership of the Faculty will give you the opportunity to send two delegates to these gatherings free (Director and Deputy level ideally).
The next Mental Health Directors’ Forum will take place on June 15th and will be addressed by Prof Martin Knapp & Professor Dinesh Bhugra.
MH FINANCE Technical Forum
Technical Forums are developed as a direct output of the steering group mentioned above, and are designed to be an informal and interactive environment for finance directors and senior finance staff to discuss and debate topics of particular significance to the MH finance community. The steering group decides on the subjects to be covered at the Technical Forums, which will tend to be issues that feature heavily in their meetings and which they feel merit a particular focus and possibly some external guidance and assistance. In general these are half day events, often starting with a networking lunch. Our first technical forum was focused on MH PbR. Membership of the Faculty will give you the opportunity to send two delegates free to at least one Technical Forum per year.
Where ever possible the meetings will be held in conjunction with the FT FINANCE Faculty’s activities in order to maximise the benefit of your time out of the office. For example, the MH Director’s Forums in June 2009 and January 2010 took place prior to, and after the FT Directors’ Forum on the same days.
Membership benefits:
- 2 places (Director & Deputy Director level only) at 2 Mental Health Directors’ Forums
- 2 places at minimum of 1 Technical Forum
- Special prices and offers for the HFMA Annual Mental Health Conference – e.g. in 2009 this was buy one place and get your second booking free
- Access to MH FINANCE faculty area on line to include document library and online forum
- Free copy of any MH products produced by steering group or sub-committees throughout the year
For more information on joining MH FINANCE or to apply for membership of the group, please e-mail or call Kamal Babra (kamal.babra@hfma.org.uk / 0117 938 8991).