The next few years will reshape mental health support across England and Wales. Neighbourhood health, the Mental Health Strategy, social care reform, Mental Health Act implementation, workforce change, and new approaches to commissioning all raise the same fundamental question: what should support look like if it starts with people and communities rather than organisational boundaries?

For mental health charities, much of the answer is familiar. Our members have long provided support that is earlier, closer to home, connected to people's lives, and rooted in communities. They know that recovery, where possible, can depend on housing, relationships, employment, income, culture, rights, belonging, and trust as much as on a clinical appointment.

Our strategy is about closing the gap between that reality and the way systems still too often plan, fund, and measure mental health support. We want community-based provision to be recognised as essential: valued by Government, embedded in reform, reflected in commissioning and investment, and sustained for the long term.

We exist to strengthen, represent, and champion mental health charities delivering services and support. We bring together what providers know, connect it with evidence and lived experience, and make sure that understanding reaches the people shaping policy and services.

Our ambition is that when national and local decision-makers want to understand what community mental health providers know, what people and communities need, and what will work in practice, the Association is where they turn.

For more than two decades, the Association has worked alongside mental health charities as the sector and the wider mental health system have changed. Our role has developed with what members have needed from us: a stronger voice for community services and mental health social care, practical routes into national policy, support for smaller and specialist providers, and better evidence about the contribution of community provision.

That history matters because the questions are still current. Providers are adapting to rising demand, short-term funding, workforce pressures, changing regulation, and major reform. Our strategy builds on what the Association has learned with members while setting a clearer direction for the years ahead.

1. A stronger and more influential sector

Create the conditions in which providers can plan, invest in their people, and continue delivering the support communities need.

2. Community mental health at the centre of reform

Ensure charities are involved in the design, delivery, leadership, and accountability of reform from the outset.

3. Evidence that drives better decisions

Build a fuller picture of need, provision, gaps, and impact by combining data, research, provider knowledge, and lived experience.

Our ability to deliver this strategy depends on an Association that is independent, resilient, and useful to members. Membership remains at the centre of our legitimacy and sustainability, alongside partnerships and income that support our purpose without compromising our voice.

Growth is not an end in itself. It matters because it allows us to sustain the relationships, evidence, convening, and representation that individual providers cannot always resource on their own.

Our strategy covers England and Wales, but we do not assume the policy, commissioning, and delivery contexts are identical. We will reflect those differences in our relationships, evidence, and influencing while retaining the value of a shared membership.