Maria Eagle – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Maria Eagle on 2015-12-14.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much his Department plans to spend on armed forces veterans’ mental health services in (a) 2015-16, (b) 2016-17, (c) 2017-18, (d) 2018-19 and (e) 2019-20.
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 National Health Service 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 additional 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;
- 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.
NHS England will soon commence a consultation to explore the future service needs for veterans mental health services. Future procurement will depend upon the outcome of this consultation as services will be commissioned to take account of revised needs assessments.
Veterans are also able to access the full range of NHS mental health services in the same way as the wider public.
