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News Update | 04/05/11 08:39
Lightbox campaign and MHPF member input
As you know, Mental Health Providers Forum (MHPF) has launched a new campaign promoting the ability and contribution of voluntary sector organisations in supporting and delivering a broad range of mental health services.
Lightbox, which was launched on 11 April, will provide information to commissioners and GP Leads that will support them to meet the needs of their local population. It will ensure that when it comes to mental health services those in leadership roles are properly informed to commission services that make a difference.
If you haven't had the opportunity to do so yet watch our short video about the campaign and get involved at: www.lightbox-mhpf.org.uk.
You can contact Onye Imonioro: o.imonioro@mhpf.org.uk for more information. We will also shortly be sending around more detailed information on the various ways that your organisation can become actively involved in the campaign.
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A new tool for measuring and demonstrating organisational impact
A new online tool has been launched which will enable organisations to demonstrate the outcomes and value of the work they do.
Views, which was formally launched last month, is supported by ACEVO, Catch 22, Nesta, Social Investment Business and BT. It captures a range of different data types and organises it in a way that enables analysis and reporting across services/organisational projects. There are also statistical tools for analysis and benchmarking with other organisations.
Around 300 organisations were involved in the prototyping of Views. Currently BT is introducing local authorities to the platform, while Social Investment Business is promoting it to investors.
Find out more
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MHPF member direct input to the NHS Future Forum
In a letter sent out by Dr Ian McPherson, MHPF has invited members to input to the NHS Future Forum - the body set up to lead the Government's listening exercise on the proposed NHS modernisation.
A reminder that you can feed your observations and comments on the themes set out by the NHS FF by sending your views, by 9th May, to Paul Farmer CE who has been invited to join the Forum, This will enable Paul Farmer to get sight of your views as quickly as possible and for MHPF to put together an overview of the key messages to share with members.
Feedback, to be copied to info@mhf.org.uk, may be on any of the themes but we envisage the sector will be most interested in the issue of Choice and competition - addressing the following questions:
o Which are the types of services where choice of provider is most likely to improve quality?
o What is the best way to ensure a level playing field between the different kinds of provider who could be involved?
o What else can be done to make patient choice a reality?
(An oversight of the themes being addressed by the NHS FF is given below, with a broad outline of some of the key concerns.)
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NHS Future Forum themes - broad overview of concerns
- Accountability and patients
This addresses the move away from the current "top-down" management structure of the NHS to an emphasis on locally run services delivered by GP Consortia. Whilst delivery led by local need should ensure a more responsive health care system there is concern: about the ability of GPs to act independently as commissioners; and a worsening of the whole ‘postcode lottery' access to health care conundrum.
Under current reforms, including Any Willing Provider, the onus is on competition between providers as the incentive to: stop complacency; and act as the driver for care providers to deliver quality care for patients. A key concern is that whilst competition will leave the strongest providers standing - or the most able to whether the financial storm through high volumn delivery of services - it will drive down the overall quality and range of care being provided.
Where does the voluntary sector fit into this equation when private sector providers with the scale of their resources driving are able to drive down ‘unit cost'? And where do the small specialist providers fit into the equation? In effect this could mean that whilst there is more competition amongst providers, in real terms there is less choice for service clients.
With the planned abolition of Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and transfer of service commissioning to locality based GP commissioners, the NHS leadership structures are gong through a radical overhaul. In short, with the NHS Commissioning Board at the helm, at the ground level decision making powers transfer to doctors - and thus an anticipated reduction in bureaucracy.
Patients will have access to more information about the performance of local services which will feed into decision making as to where they are treated and how they can use their personal budgets. However, the issues being flagged up: question the capacity of GPs to manage commissioning as well as deliver care; and question the emphasis being put on doctors, possibly at the expense of the expertise of other key categories of staff within the health care system and stakeholders outside the NHS whom GP may not traditionally have a commissioning relationship with.
Health Education England (HEE) is the new board being put in set up to replace the current deaneries and professional advisory bodies for allied health professionals (and nursing and midwifery). As such, under current reforms, management and maintenance of standards will transfer to HEE. There is concern that the proposals for the HEE being put forward do not clearly set out how the HEE will carry out the full scope of its responsibilities. This could create a potential knock on effect on the quality of education and further down the line a drop in professional expertise and the quality of patient care.
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Final Count Me In census produced by Care Quality Commission
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published the Count me in census. Established as part of the Governments five-year Delivering Race Equality in Mental Health programme (DRE) the census records the inpatient experience of black and minority ethnic (BME) communities in inpatient care (in the NHS private the sector, and on community treatment orders).
A number of organisations including Mind and the Mental Health Foundation have expressed deep concern about the alarming lack of improvements to service delivery which have seen the rates of admission for BME communities, detention under the Mental Health Act and rate of seclusion go unchanged. Figures show that admission ratios for people from black and mixed black backgrounds, especially men, still remain over the national average (up to eight times higher in some communities).
Worryingly 77% of female and 61% of male mental health inpatients are still not accommodated in designated single-sex wards. The NHS Operating Framework for 2011-2012 confirmed that all providers of NHS funded care are expected to eliminate mixed-sex. It has also
accommodation, except where it is in the overall best interest of the patients. It has also announced fines of £250 for each breach of mixed sex accommodation as way of tacking the issue - steps that it's hoped will hasten the full implementation of what has been government policy since 2005.
Download results of the ‘Count me in' census
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