Mental health services continue to be underfunded despite government promises to treat problems equally to physical health, according to a report from the Health Foundation.
Reflecting the government’s policy objective to achieve parity between mental and physical health, NHS England developed a programme in 2013/14 with a set of commitments to promote it. One of the commitments was clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) should invest in mental health services each year in line with growth in overall funding allocation.
The Health Foundation’s A Year of Plenty report was released on 27 March, tracking NHS spending by identifying areas of funding changes in line with promises made by the government at the start of their Five Year Forward View, published in 2014.
Between 2015/16 and 2016/17, funding for all mental health services is planned to increase by 2.3%, from £9.3 billion to £9.5 billion, matching the increase in the overall funding allocation to CCGs. However, 22% of CCGs’ spending plans do not meet the requirement to increase planned mental health funding at the same rate as their overall funding allocation.
In response, the Mental Health Network has called for greater transparency in funds distribution, referring to ‘missing funding’ not finding its way to mental health services.
Chief executive Sean Duggan said: ‘This welcome report gives yet more evidence mental health services are still not receiving the funding they were promised and are not receiving parity with physical services, despite an urgent need for funding.
‘This shortfall threatens to undermine the incredible efforts of mental health trusts and their staff, who are keeping patients safe and transforming services in the face of increasing pressures.
‘Time and again we have called for more transparency around where promised funding is going. NHS England’s recently-launched dashboard is beginning to make the picture clearer, however for many mental health trusts the missing funding is already forcing difficult choices about what services to provide.’