Diane Abbott – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Diane Abbott on 2014-05-01.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that resources for mental health services meet the requirements of both adults and children.
Norman Lamb
Mental health and wellbeing, for both adults and children, is a priority for this Government. Our overarching goal is to ensure that mental health has equal priority with physical health, and that everyone who needs it has timely access to the best available treatment. We have enshrined in law the equal status of mental and physical health in the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
The Mandate to NHS England makes clear that ‘everyone who needs it should have timely access to evidence based services’. This will involve extending and ensuring more open access to the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme, in particular for children and young people, and for those out of work.
We are also committed to introducing access and/or waiting time standards for mental health. The revised Mandate asks NHS England to develop and evaluate a range of costed options to implement access and waiting standards for mental health services starting from April 2015, with a phased introduction depending on affordability.
We will hold the National Health Service to account for the quality of services and outcomes for mental health patients through the NHS Outcomes Framework. Improvements for people with mental health problems will also be a crucial element of success across the framework as a whole.
Our action plan, Closing the Gap, which was launched in January 2014, sets our priorities for action and progress in mental health services over the next couple of years, including actions supporting commissioners in allocating resources.
We are setting up a new, national Mental Health Intelligence Network to provide comprehensive, up to date information about mental health and wellbeing, mental health problems and what the most pressing needs are in each area – which will support commissioning of services.
