Mental health services to be strengthened

LAST week the health secretary announced a significant strengthening of UK’s mental health services, with thousands of new roles to be created in mental health care.

The Government has committed £1.3bn to transform mental health services and aims to treat an extra one million patients by 2020 to 2021.

The funding boost will enable the NHS to provide mental health services seven days a week, 24 hours a day and crucially will integrate mental and physical health services for the first time.

It will see a dramatic increase in the number of trained nurses, therapists, psychiatrists, peer support workers and other mental health professionals to deliver on this commitment, with over 21,000 extra staff in total. It will start to tackle what the Prime Minister has described as a ‘burning injustice’ of mental illness and inadequate treatment.

Local residents will know that I have long championed the need for better mental health services and so I support these initiatives, which are long overdue. For too long there hasn’t been enough focus on mental healthcare in this country, it has been a hidden injustice surrounded by unacceptable stigma, leaving many to suffer in silence.

However, I believe that this is not an issue that can be solved with the writing of a cheque, even a £1.3bn sized one.

Crucial to the success of this programme will be ensuring the hard working staff who will deliver these vital mental health services are properly trained and able to use their professional expertise. It therefore rests on the Government’s ability to recruit and train the required staff up to the right standards, in order to deliver the quality of care that is needed.

I intend to monitor this policy and the actions of the Government as it goes about meeting the ambitious targets it has set itself and as we go about the important work of turning what are impressive numbers on paper into people actually experiencing better levels of mental health and quality of life.