Tracey Crouch – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tracey Crouch on 2014-04-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the level of mental illness in (a) the West Kent Clinical Commissioning Group area, (b) the Medway Clinical Commissioning Group area, (c) Kent and (d) England in each of the last five years.

Norman Lamb

Information on the levels of mental illness in the West Kent Clinical Commissioning Group area, the Medway Clinical Commissioning Group area, Kent and England is not held centrally.

All local authorities are required to develop and publish a Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) – an analysis of the current and future health and care needs of the local population – and a Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy (JHWS) to address these needs.

JSNAs and JHWSs form the basis of National Health Service and local authorities’ own commissioning plans, across health, social care, public health and children’s services. Local health and social care commissioners are expected to develop their commissioning plans in line with any relevant JSNA or JHWS, and must be able to justify any parts of their plans which are not consistent.

The JSNA process therefore offers valuable opportunities to drive improvement in meeting the needs of local people with mental health needs. However, the Department has not highlighted any care group or area of need over another as this would risk undermining the purpose of JSNAs being an objective, comprehensive and most importantly – a locally-owned process.