Mental Health Services

(asked on 8th December 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what policies have been implemented by NHS England to implement the legal requirement in relation to parity of esteem.


Answered by
Earl Howe Portrait
Earl Howe
Deputy Leader of the House of Lords
This question was answered on 19th December 2014

The Government holds the National Health Service to account for achieving parity of esteem by setting objectives in the NHS England Mandate and monitoring their delivery through the NHS Outcomes Framework. If NHS England is failing to deliver against its objectives, Ministers can ask NHS England to report on what action it has taken, or to set out a plan for improvement.

The NHS Mandate 2015-16 makes clear that by March 2016 we expect NHS England to have made further measurable progress towards achieving true parity of esteem where everyone who needs it has timely access to evidenced based services that are better integrated with physical health services.

In January 2014 the Government set out its priorities for mental health in Closing the Gap that sets out the steps that the government, NHS England and their partners will take to make progress towards parity of esteem for mental health. This is complemented by the Department and NHS England’s new five-year plan for mental health, Achieving Better Access to Mental Health Services by 2020 that was published in October 2014.

To make progress towards delivering parity of esteem the Department and NHS England have:

- worked together to ensure that there are consistent messages to commissioners and providers about the importance of delivering parity of esteem for mental health service users;

- extended the legal rights to choice in mental health so people with mental health problems will have the same choice for their care as they do for their physical health;

- invested £400 million in Improving Access to Psychological Therapy for adults and £54m over the four year period from 2011-2015 in the children and young people’s IAPT programme to transform child and adolescent mental health services;

- set two new waiting time targets to make sure that, by 2016, at least 50% of young people referred for early intervention in psychosis services will start treatment within two weeks and treatment within six weeks for 75% of people referred to the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme, with 95% of people being treated within 18 weeks;

- identified £40 million additional spending this year and freed up a further £80 million for 2015-16, to support the implementation of the new waiting time standards; and

- invested £2 million in nine street triage pilots where police and mental health professionals work together to support people in mental health crisis access safe, appropriate care and we have committed £25 million in 2014-15 to commission 10 trial sites delivering on a new standard service specification for liaison and diversion services in England.

Monitor and NHS England are responsible for setting the national tariff arrangements and are working together to develop a national payment system for mental health which promotes improving outcomes and recovery.

We will also be investing £30 million a year over the next five years in England to improve services for young people with mental health problems. This will place particular emphasis on eating disorders.

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