Press Release: Norfolk and Waveney Adult Mental Health Strategy written by BCG

A spokesperson for the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk said:

We already know from service users, carers, front line staff and three Inadequate ratings from the care regulator, CQC, that mental health services in Norfolk and Suffolk have been in crisis for the past five years.
What alarms us about this report, produced at great expense by US management consultancy firm Boston Consulting Group, is that it ignores inadequate funding. Since the Norfolk clinical commissioning groups were founded (13/14), referrals have risen 48 per cent but the share of the NHS budget received by secondary mental health services (NSFT) has fallen. They were almost bound to fail. According to recent research by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, NSFT is one of only nine mental health trusts in the country to have seen year on year decreases in mental health funding.
This report seems to have been written almost entirely from the perspective of primary care and commissioners but it is people who have severe and enduring mental illnesses and rely on secondary specialist care, such as people with psychosis, dementia or bipolar disorder, who have already suffered most with the cuts to crisis and community teams and the closure of homeless and assertive outreach teams. Now, this document appears to be advocating the closure of existing community mental health teams (CMHTs) in a disruptive and expensive reorganisation which will have a devastating effect on continuity of care, service quality and staff retention and recruitment.
The problem is not so much the current model of care but rather inadequate commissioning, funding, management and supervision of mental health care. Elsewhere in the country, properly run and financed mental health services using a virtually identical model of care to that in Norfolk achieve Outstanding ratings from CQC.
ENDS.

3 thoughts on “Press Release: Norfolk and Waveney Adult Mental Health Strategy written by BCG”

  1. They will close CMHTs because they can’t run them properly with the funds available. From the perspective of the bean counters it is better to have no service at all than one that is crippled by under funding and poor morale. The money is never going to be made available so they simply cut the vulnerable adrift.

  2. It’s not so much the level of funding but the competence of those who feed at the trough. Many at director level have fed and gone however there is a lower feeding level who have delivered three inadequate and remain in post. About time examinations of this level took place to see what the public is getting for their money. With the increasing level of third sector involvement in NSFT mental health services with the associated management and back office duplication of cost value for money and CQC inspection of these “chairities” is also essential

  3. As the family member/carer of someone with a chronic mental health problem, I have seen a horrendous decline in her condition as a direct result of cost-cutting services. Why are mental health services losing funding? Exactly which people/groups/committees make these recommendations and decisions? It is they who should be targeted

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