Community mental health services
Community mental health services play a crucial role in delivering mental health care for adults and older adults with severe mental health needs.
The NHS is supporting local services to modernise in line with the ambitions set out in the 10 Year Health Plan, enabling more people to receive help as close to home as possible.
Neighbourhood mental health centres
The NHS 10 Year Health Plan committed to developing a new neighbourhood model of community mental health. The model will bring together a range of community mental health services under 1 roof, including crisis services, community mental health services and short-stay beds.
This is the next stage of transforming adult mental health services, building on existing work to:
The approach includes close working with primary care and neighbourhood health services, and draws on international exemplars to improve mental health care for adults in England.
Find out more about the new centres.
Mental health personalised care framework: a modern care programme approach
The Mental health personalised care framework supports improved care for people of all ages who need secondary mental health care.
This framework focuses on the foundations of good care. It sets out the expectations on services around the assessment, planning and management of safety and risk, including where there is a risk of harm to others or history of violence.
For staff working in mental health services, the framework provides clarity on the core elements of care for people with severe mental health problems. For patients, the framework describes what they should expect as standard from services.
The approach set out in the framework reaffirms the principles established in the Care Programme Approach and later reiterated in the Community mental health framework. It centres on 4 key principles:
- Everyone has a personalised care and support plan.
- Everyone has a person within the services responsible for their plan.
- Plans are reviewed regularly and when things change.
- Outcomes are measured and responded to.
Published alongside the framework is detailed guidance on safety planning and risk management within mental health services.
Delivering personalised care for children and young people
Additional guidance for implementing the framework in children and young people’s services is provided.
The framework’s core principles and actions to deliver mental health personalised care for adults and older adults apply to children and young people also. However, differences in the needs of and networks of support for children and young people need to be considered across all these principles and actions when planning and delivering personalised care and support for them.
Ensuring the framework is also used for children and young people supports consistency of care in mental health services across the life course and improves outcomes for them, both in the short-term and longer term as they move into adulthood.
Implementation of the framework
Putting the framework into practice will first require services to review their current policies and practices against the principles and actions it sets out. All services have been asked to review current policies and practices against the guidance and develop implementation plans to address gaps. These plans should be in place by October 2026.
Read the guidance and supporting documentation.
Early intervention in psychosis
People who experience psychosis can, and do, recover. The time from onset of psychosis to the provision of evidence-based treatment has a significant influence on long-term outcomes. The sooner people are able to access evidence-based treatment, the better the outcomes they achieve.
Early intervention in psychosis services aim to ensure that people experiencing a first episode of psychosis begin treatment within 2 weeks of referral. We publish regular statistics on the performance of services in meeting the 2-week waiting time standard.
The quality of provision within early intervention in psychosis teams is regularly monitored through the National Clinical Audit of Psychosis.
Intensive and assertive community mental health care
Some people who experience psychosis, particularly where paranoia is present, struggle to access evidenced-based care and treatment. This can be due to core services not being able to meet people’s needs, the impact of symptoms such as paranoia or a lack of understanding from the individual that they are unwell. This group of people are often marginalised, very vulnerable, at high risk of accommodation instability or homelessness, and not accessing services for multiple reasons.
‘Intensive and assertive community mental health care’ describes an approach designed to meet the needs of this group. This care involves high frequencies of contact with individuals (intensive) alongside an assertiveness of approach to ensure people get the right treatment and care.
The NHS 10 Year Health Plan commits to achieving 100% coverage of intensive and assertive community mental health services. We have published guidance for integrated care boards on the service requirements to support the needs of this group. It also asks all systems to regularly review local provision and continue to make improvements as appropriate.