General Article Funding for mental health services fails to reach the frontline

Topic Selected: Mental Health
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By Keith Cooper

Mental health services for children and young people are still ‘poorly funded’ despite significant Government investment in services, frontline staff believe.

This is the warning from nine out of ten health professionals surveyed for a new BMA paper, which examines the financial state of mental health services, including perinatal and psychological therapy services.

Analysis of data from official sources and Freedom of Information (FoI) requests found evidence that the recent, and welcome, hike in central funding was failing to reach the frontline.

Despite the increase, many clinical commissioning groups CCGs, which buy and plan care, were either maintaining or reducing cash flows to mental health trusts – as they, in turn, struggled to cope with rising demand.

‘Despite some geographic variations,’ the paper states, ‘there appears to be no obvious uplift in spending in recent years.’

It adds: ‘Insufficient funding is one of the most significant barriers that limits d...

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