MPs to Examine the State Of Community Mental Health Services in New Inquiry
The Health and Social Care Committee has, this week, launched an inquiry to examine the provision of community mental health services for adults with severe mental health needs.
The inquiry will focus on the experience of patients receiving mental health care in the community, with MPs examining what high quality care looks like from the point of view of adults with severe mental illness (SMI).
The Committee will investigate the current state of access to community mental health services for adults with SMI, considering how access could be improved across the country.
The inquiry will also scrutinize the implementation and effectiveness since 2019 of the Community Mental Health Framework, which was intended to move away “from siloed, hard-to-reach services towards joined-up care and whole population approaches”.
Issues over access to mental health services were highlighted in Lord Darzi’s report into the state of the NHS in England, which found that for people needing to access mental health services, “long waits have become normalized”. Darzi found that there were around 1 million people waiting to access mental health services by April 2024, including 345,000 referrals where people were waiting more than a year for first contact.
As part of their inquiry, the cross-party Committee will also probe how the wider health and social needs of people with SMI can be addressed, including in employment and housing. MPs will explore how community mental health services can work with social care, the third sector and local government to better address the wider determinants of mental health outcomes.
The Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, Layla Moran MP, said: “For people who have severe and enduring mental health conditions, such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and severe depression, community mental health services are a lifeline. But far too often they are ignored. “
“We want to examine what is missing from those services, who has access to high quality support and who is falling through gaps, and where there are examples of best practice that we can learn from. We know that community mental health care providers are under immense pressure, and in this inquiry we want to look at the interventions that would best enable delivery of high quality services.”
“But it is not only health services that support people’s mental health – employment and housing support also play an important role. We want to look at how these different services can be integrated and built around the needs of patients, and we will investigate some examples of good practice and what needs to happen to scale up the adoption of these practices across the country.”
“Our committee wants to hear from people with lived experience and practitioners in the field. We want to put patients, their families and communities at the heart of this inquiry, to understand what high quality care looks like from their point of view.”
