Reports from both the Guardian and The Centre for Mental Health have recently highlighted that there is a huge backlog of care for people seeking mental health support within England.
The Centre for Mental Health is campaigning for support on a ten-year, cross government mental health strategy, looking at prevention, equality and support through services to ensure there is a developed plan to “build a mentally healthier nation”.
The reports highlight that:
- Mental health services are feeling overwhelmed due to many factors including post covid, cost of living crisis and NHS clinical role recruitment.
- There is currently a 7.7m strong care back log
- The government are investing an additional £2.3bn annually to expand services
- Government NHS workforce plan sets out the ambition to grow the mental health workforce by 73%
Everyturn Mental Health CEO, Adam Crampsie, commented:
“We really welcome The Centre for Mental Health’s call for a ten-year plan. Whilst we continue to support the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan and additional government spending, we need to ensure that there is an immediate response to support people who need to access local mental health services, right now.
We know that increasing the NHS’s clinical workforce through a long-term training programme can begin to address the health and care staffing crisis and will help to secure greater capacity within the NHS to support people with their mental and physical health.
However, we would also call for more community level support and funding for Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) services to be addressed as well.
It’s important that organisations work together to help people, and by partnering with the NHS to open projects like our Safe Havens services; an out of hours, in-person community level service which helps make mental health support more accessible, we can achieve this.
By continuing to work with the NHS, VCSE’s and other organisations more closely, we can all ensure that everyone in mental health crisis has access to the right support, in the right location, at the right time to ensure no one struggles alone.”