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In the meantime setting a new relationship with police services might also find its way to the top of the to-do-list.

To do list

There are times in your life when you need a bit of help.

Carrying a bag of shopping on and off the bus. Pushing a buggy with twins and opening a spring loaded shop door.

Bits and pieces of your life that are made that much easier with a kind hand, a step forward and a smile.

And, there are times when you need help but you don’t really know what you want.

There used to be a time when we could relax in the knowledge that as illness or happenstance befell us an ambulance would come and scoop you up.

A policeman would be reassuring, just by being there and the fire service would run towards what most of us would run away from.

These days… have yer home broken into and eventually the police will give you a crime number for you to make an insurance claim.

In 2021/22 there were 192,060 home burglaries reported in England and Wales. That’s an average of 526 burglaries a day – a house being burgled every 164 seconds!

Around 4,700 adults were sentenced for a domestic burglary offence in 2019… about 2.5%.

Ambulance response times? It’s been days, hours and the Nuff’s say it can now be about an hour and half.

The fire service are still heroic. Their work has changed. I heard tale of an elderly woman whose predilection was for smoking in bed. Well into her 80’s… who’s going to get her on to nicotine patches.

The fire service turned up with a fire-proof quilt, a free fire alarm and an ashtray with a self closing lid. Brilliant.

Multi-agency response. Ain’t it grand when a plan comes together.

It looks like one partnership is very likely to unravel.

Police services up and down the country attend mental health calls for help and hold the fort until a community psychiatric worker or other health professionals can turn up and take over.

They take people to ‘places of safety’ and generally do a great job.

It’s all coming to an end. Somebody has decided that police can save ‘a million hours of police time’ a year (and investigate some burglaries) by leaving the NHS to get on with it.

I can understand the pressures the Home Office are under for results. But, in a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing…

… there is an interesting new report from the Public Accounts Committee about NHS mental health service. Here are a few facts;

  • 17,000 staff (12%) left the NHS mental health workforce in 2021-22
  • The mental health workforce increased by 22% overall between 2016-17 and 2021-22, but…
  • … referrals to these services increased by 44% over the same period.
  • Staff vacancy rates in acute inpatient mental health services are at approximately 20% or more.
  • There is still no measure of ‘parity of esteem’, in services.
  • An estimated 1.2 million people are on the waiting list for community mental health services.
  • The NHS spends £12bn on mental health services, around 9% of its total budget
  • The proportion of 17–19yr-olds with a probable mental disorder more than doubled from 10% in 2017 to 26% in 2022.
  • Of 29 integrated care boards surveyed by the NAO, only four had all or most of the data they needed to assess patient and user experiences, and…
  • … none of them had this in relation to patient outcomes.
  • When asked by the PAC about the relative value for money and returns on investment, the Department and NHSE could not explain… the cost effectiveness of their chosen interventions for mental health services.

This is a miserable set of numbers and even more gloomy about the position MH services occupy in the hierarchy of care. Cinderella services doesn’t quite do it.

Forgotten, swept under the carpet, too difficult, abandoned?

The PAC have told NHSE, in six months’ time, they must;

‘… write to the PAC setting out what targeted interventions are envisaged for the mental health sector under the [workforce] plan to ensure it can get the doctors, nurses, therapists and other clinical and non-clinical staff that the service needs, and who will be responsible for delivering them.’

Ouch… someone will have their feet held to the fire, not before time and…

… unless there is a miracle this is going to be a very difficult letter to write and even more interesting to read.

In the meantime setting a new relationship with police services might also find its way to the top of the to-do-list.

News and Comment from Roy Lilley
Contact Roy – please use this e-address roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net
Reproduced at thetrainingnet.com by kind permission of Roy Lilley.

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