Kevan Jones – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevan Jones on 2015-12-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how the £1.8 million expenditure on mental health services for armed forces veterans by his Department in 2014-15 was spent.

Alistair Burt

NHS England has £1.8 million per annum baseline (recurrent to 2019/20) funding for veterans mental health services. This funding is used to provide 10 veterans mental health teams across England to meet locally identified needs of veterans and manage the network of providers of NHS commissioned veterans mental health services.

The funding also provides access for veterans to on-line mental health counselling services provided by the Big White Wall.

In addition, NHS England provides £3.2 million a year to commission the Armed Forces service charity Combat Stress to provide specialised inpatient services for the treatment of complex post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In 2014/15 further funding of £1.68 million was used to fund three pilots to develop and test enhanced models of care for veterans.

The pilots will:

– develop a joint substance misuse and mental health service model for veterans;

– develop an outpatient service for veterans with moderate to severe PTSD; and

– develop a modal of care to address the barriers that some veterans experience in accessing mental health services.

Veterans are also able to access the full range of NHS mental health services in the same way as the wider public.