Report says five-year plans will make mental health funding more transparent

The NHS long-term plan announced a ring-fenced fund for mental healthcare of at least £2.3bn a year in real terms by 2023/24. It pledged that mental health funding will grow faster proportionately than the overall NHS budget, while children and young people’s mental health funding will rise faster than both the overall funding and total mental health funding.

The implementation plan outlines the profile of funding for the next five years that will be invested in delivering both the mental health five-year forward view and the long-term plan. Funding for these programmes will rise from £481m in 2018/19 (baseline year) to just over £3bn in 2023/24.

Total funding for children and young people’s mental health services will increase from the baseline of £289m in 2018/19 to £380m this year, rising steadily to £904m in 2023/24.

The funding will be delivered via two streams – clinical commissioning group baselines and a central transformation fund.

The implementation plan said financial transparency will ensure the investment pledges are met. Sustainability and transformation partnerships and integrated care systems must set out how the mental health investment standard will be achieved across their systems, demonstrating this through planned investment in CCG baselines. Systems will also plan for
the use of the transformation funding to deliver the overall funding commitments.

Draft plans are due at the end of this month, with final versions completed by mid-November.

The implementation plan also promises a review of the current approaches to payment, to develop a national payment mechanism for mental health services.

Mental health providers welcomed the implementation plan, but were concerned over timescales and workforce. Sean Duggan, chief executive of the NHS Confederation’s Mental Health Network, said: ‘The timescales are tight for planning in the first year and we must be careful, too, about being too prescriptive.’

Local systems would seek to understand their workforce needs to deliver the mental health plan. System plans should include a delivery plan covering workforce as well as finance and activity. ‘Workforce remains a worry,’ Mr Duggan said. ‘It is good news that local areas will be more involved in developing their workforce but, with mental health services suffering from particularly high vacancy rates, we will need to see support from the centre.

‘Importantly, investment is needed in the wider health and care system – including in social care, capital, public health and supported housing – if the vision of the long-term plan is to be achieved.

For further reading see this months feature, Achieving the right focus