Resources

Information, tools and guidance to support mental health commissioning and the transformation of services.

Mental Health Pathways

NHS England is working with partners to develop mental health care pathways to ensure high-quality, compassionate mental health care is available whenever people need it, as close to home as possible.

Guidance is now available on:

Psychological professions vision for England 2019-24

The purpose of this document is to maximise the collective impact of the psychological professions to deliver the objectives of the NHS Long Term Plan. It has been developed by the Psychological Professions Workforce Group at NHS England and NHS Improvement and Health Education England.

Annual Survey of Liaison Psychiatry in England

The annual Survey of Liaison Psychiatry in England maps staffing composition and care provision across liaison mental health teams in acute hospital emergency departments. The fourth survey shows a positive, year-on-year increase in liaison mental health coverage, with 33% of services now operating at the ‘Core 24’ service level. This exceeds the Mental Health Five Year Forward View trajectory of 20% for 2019, placing the national expansion on track to deliver the ambition that at least 50% of liaison mental health services meet the Core 24 service standard as a minimum by 2020/21.

Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs)

Quick guides have been published to help local leaders work together to develop and deliver Sustainability and Transformation Plans which address the key priorities for the NHS, including mental health.

Developing quality and outcomes measures

The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health outlined the need for services to be able to demonstrate how they deliver evidence-based, integrated mental healthcare with services assessed on the quality and outcomes that are valued by the people who use them. It recommends national and local outcomes measures should be used as part of the payment system.

Working with stakeholders, NHS England and NHS Improvement have developed guidance, Developing quality and outcomes measures, which will support local footprints in developing quality and outcome measures, and implement routine measurement to help build the foundations for outcomes-based payment for mental health services in local areas.

In response to requests from services, and to support delivery of the ongoing ambitions to improve access and outcomes for specialist perinatal mental health (PMH) services, NHS England/Improvement commissioned The Child Outcome Research Consortium (CORC) to develop a PMH outcomes implementation manual. This focuses on good practice examples, tools, tips and information to help PMH services embed appropriate perinatal mental health outcomes measures at a local level, using outcome measures that are already part of the Mental Health Services Dataset. The manual has been co-produced with experts by experience, service managers, trust data leads and commissioners.

Care Packages and Pathway Consortium

Legacy and archived materials on mental health payment and currencies which were previously available from the Care Packages and Pathway Consortium (CCCP) can be found on the archived CCCP website.

IAPT Workforce Census Report

The 2015 IAPT Workforce Census Report, produced jointly by NHS England and Health Education England, offers the most comprehensive view to date of the size and shape of the IAPT workforce in England, providing insight into the capacity of IAPT services to offer the full range of NICE-recommended psychological therapies.

The results are being used to inform workforce planning discussions and future IAPT expansion by providing information about the current skill mix and skill gaps, retention and turnover of staff, as well as identifying staff groups who could benefit from IAPT training courses to increase capacity for the full range of therapies.

New payment approaches for mental health services

Changes to Sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983

Changes to government legislation around police powers under the Mental Health Act are effective from 11 December 2017.  Sections 135/6 of the Mental Health Act (MHA) set out how and when a person believed ‘to be suffering from mental disorder’ can be removed to a place of safety and detained there for the purpose of undergoing a MHA assessment.

These changes are significant for commissioners and providers in the NHS, local authorities, and police forces. Find full details of what they mean in this letter, issued on 31 October 2017.