Association of Mental Health Providers

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Manifesto for Mental Health and the VCSE

• We believe it is vital to consider and obtain a greater understanding of the breadth and depth of the mental health voluntary and community sector to better utilise existing social capital.
• We believe that there should be attention to methodology behind engagement of the voluntary sector, with involvement of organisations who can be honestly and independently representative of the wider voluntary and community sector. There should be focused attention to the wider inclusion and support of voluntary sector infrastructure bodies, both specialist and broad, that can better represent the interests of a wide range of organisations effectively.
• We would like guidelines for Ministers of the new administration and commissioners to emphasise equity, concentrating on creating a whole system service with an even spread across providers of Mental Health services; based on ability to deliver what people want and need irrespective of type of provider.
• We would like guidelines for Ministers of the new administration and commissioners to contain a more consistent and clarified understanding of outcomes and benefits of services provided, including cost analysis.
• We would like guidelines for Ministers of the new administration and commissioners to contain a better understanding of integration, beyond looking at process and joint resources.
• We would like to see one of the goals of the new administration to be overall improved commissioning and viable contracting, that demonstrates a clear understanding of the needs of a changing and evolving health and care landscape.
• We would like one of the goals of the new administration to be a sustained commitment to better resourcing of prevention in mental health, with the foresight that such investment can save both resource and human lives.
• In relation to this, we would like the new administration to ensure that good, effective voluntary and community services are recognised for their essential role in community care and support, and prevention of hospital admissions.
• We would like the new administration to recognise the contribution of the mental health voluntary and community sector in addressing wider community resilience, sustaining employment and wellbeing through its work.
• We would like the new administration to take account of the qualities of mental health voluntary and community sector providers in the development of regulation and statute, ensuring that there is an open and responsive dialogue between voluntary and community sector practice and statute.
• We fully endorse the current commitment to creating parity of esteem for mental health care, and would like to encourage the new administration to continue the commitment to a reduction in waiting times and standards for mental health, to improve access for people to appropriate care.
• We would like the new administration to take note of the weight that regulation and commissioning requirements can impose on high quality smaller scale voluntary and community sector organisations, resulting in an inability to retain or support workforce, and a reduction in the quality of overall practice and support.
• We would like the new administration to take note of existing innovation and pilot models already existing in the voluntary and community sector, and to allocate resources for a wide range of mental health services, to ensure there is a choice for all.
• We would like the new administration to take note of the existing developing partnership models that bring NHS and voluntary and community sector providers together. These effectively create a new and more flexible collaborative whole-system, delivering a more holistic range of person-centred services.
• We fully support the intention to streamline data and information systems across health and social care consistently, but would like to emphasise the need to fully engage with the voluntary and community sector in all aspects of the work particularly with regards to the development of streamlined patient records and information sharing.

 

Read our Position Statement.