NHS Confederation responds to the Centre for Mental Health's report on the Better Mental Health Fund’s impact in disadvantaged communities
Responding to the Centre for Mental Health’s report ‘Made in Communities’, Sean Duggan, chief executive of the NHS Confederation’s Mental Health Network, said:
“Local authorities, voluntary sector and independent providers all have a key role to play in delivering better mental health services and to improve the population’s mental health, so it’s positive to see the key findings of this report recognise these important organisations and relationships.
“Social determinants are significant drivers of poor mental health, and poverty and deprivation can significantly worsen someone’s outcomes. For example, children from the most deprived 20% of households are four times as likely to have serious mental health difficulties by the age of 11 as those from the wealthiest 20%. So it’s positive to see initiatives using the Better Mental Health Fund to target investment where it can make the biggest impact.
“We agree that short term funding can be harmful and creates uncertainty for providers, and it’s especially difficult for voluntary sector organisations to survive on this type of arrangement. Investment should be long term, not year on year, and we need to see better mechanisms for funding evidence-based models which have gone through a pilot phase and produced positive results.
“Leaders will also be keen to understand what happens next to scale up and fund the projects which saw positive results, particularly those that have been co-produced and designed with community involvement to meet local need – the importance of which is acknowledged by the report.
“We also need to see more in the public Mental Health space. This includes an increase to public health grants, with a specific commitment to spend a dedicated proportion on mental health, so local authorities can invest in innovative, evidenced and proactive preventative initiatives like the case studies highlighted in the report.”
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