Extra child mental health services funding ‘won’t be enough’ to cope with demand

Extra funding for mental health services will not be enough to ensure all children with mental health problems are helped, the head of the NHS in England has suggested.

Simon Stevens said the need for services already outstrips the budget and will continue to do so in 2020 when there is more money in the system.

But it will mean that extra people are helped to access services, he told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

The NHS England chief executive was grilled by MPs about a National Audit Office report on improving access to mental health services which concluded that while progress has been made, ”much remains to be done”.

When PAC chairwoman Meg Hillier asked Mr Stevens what he would do if need on the ground outstrips the budget, he said: “The need on the ground already outstrips the budget and will still outstrip an expanded budget in 2020.

“Even if you look at the very important area of children and young people’s mental health services, even the important extra investment that is going in there, may mean that we instead of being able to respond to perhaps one in four children who might be defined as having a mental health need, we can improve that such so that we are responding to one in three.

“That will be hugely welcome for the 70,000 extra children who are getting those services but that most clearly is not ‘mission accomplished’.”

Mr Stevens also said that the NHS would have to have a rethink on spending in acute hospitals to free up some money for mental health care.

He said: “Our problem in mental health services is that across the NHS it has been the squeaky wheel that has got the oil.

“If you think about the large cost overruns in acute hospitals, there are understandable reasons for that, but it has had the effect of crowding out what would have been investment in mental health services and primary care.

“The reality is, this year we are going to have to have a reset on what spending looks like in acute hospitals in order to free up some of the investment we need to make in mental health.”

He also said that he is not a fan of the Government’s phraseology “parity of esteem” which refers to putting mental health services on par with physical health services.

“We all have a shared ambition to get equal respect and equal treatment for people with mental health needs compared with physical health needs,” he said.

“That goes under the rather jargonistic description of ‘parity of esteem’ which, frankly, I don’t really like, because I think most normal human beings would not know what that means.

“We are seeking to get going on that. We have got a clear set of service improvements that the Independent Mental Health Task Force has told us to get on with.

“In terms of the funding profile and the speed at which we can put extra money into the National Health Service, that is a function of the funding available to the NHS overall.

“If the NHS had its way then we would of course do more faster, but we don’t set the NHS budget.”

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