SCOPING EXERCISE THAT WILL EXAMINE THE WORKFORCE DELIVERING CORE 24 SERVICES AND MENTAL HEALTH CRISI...

The main purpose of HEE is to improve the quality of healthcare for the people and patients of England through education, training and lifelong development of staff. Originally established as a Special Health Authority in 2012, HEE is now a Non-Departmental Public Body. More than 160,000 students are at this moment studying to be part of our future workforce. That includes doctors, nurses, midwives, paramedics, physiotherapists and many more roles – in fact there are over 300 different types of jobs performed by more than one million people in the NHS. Our vision is to provide the right workforce, with the right skills and values, in the right place at the right time to better meet the needs and wants of patients – now and in the future.

The Independent Mental Health Taskforce Five Year Forward View (February 2016) made it clear that improving access to high-quality mental health care must now become a national priority. The Achieving Better Access to Mental Health Services programme was developed by NHS England, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health to introduce standards for mental health care and ensure that these can be properly measured across the country.

Nowhere within mental health care is the issue of parity more important than in the provision of urgent and emergency care for people experiencing a mental health crisis. Proper funding for mental health crisis care and its full integration within NHS urgent and emergency care is one of the commitments made in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health. With the publication of Implementing the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health (July 2016), and the implementation guidance for Achieving Better Access to 24/7 Urgent and Emergency Mental Health Care, commissioners and service providers have powerful tools at their disposal to improve crisis care for people of all ages across the country. Liaison mental health services already play a valuable role in supporting people in a crisis, as well as adults and older adults who have both mental and physical health problems in a general hospital setting. They can help people to avoid lengthy stays in hospital and can speed up discharge.

The aim of Achieving Better Access to 24/7 Urgent and Emergency Mental Health Care is to ensure people who experience a mental health crisis have received a response from an urgent and emergency mental health service within an hour, and that within four hours they have received the appropriate support to meet their needs and an evidence-based package of care is in place. Improving liaison mental health provision has been a long-standing goal for the NHS and is a ‘must do’ in the most recent two-year planning guidance for 2017-19. In April 2016, as part of the CCG Improvement and Assessment Framework 2016/17, CCGs were also asked to ensure that agreed and funded plans are in place to aim for a core 24 (24 hours, 7 days a week) service by 2020/21.

As a starting point to support the effective delivery of Core 24 services in Urgent and Emergency Mental Health Care across the Midlands and East region, Health Education England would like to examine the workforce delivering Core 24 services and mental health crisis services across Midlands and East.