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Government & NGOs
Mental Health Taskforce
The independent Mental Health Taskforce published its Five Year Forward View in February 2016 which set out the current state of mental health service provision in England and made recommendations in all service areas.
NHS England accepted all the recommendations in the report for which it held responsibility and it was agreed with the Government that to support this transformation, mental health services will benefit from additional investment of £1bn per year by 2020/21.
In July 2016, NHS England published an Implementation Plan detailing how it will deliver the recommendations made by the Taskforce working with its partner arms-length bodies. The Plan presents the timeframes and funding for delivery of the programmes of work which will transform mental health services.
Please visit the NHS England website for more information.
Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Well-being Taskforce
The taskforce is looking at how to improve the way children’s mental health services are organised, commissioned and provided and how to make it easier for young people to access help and support, including in schools, through voluntary organisations and online.
The taskforce, co-chaired by Jon Rouse Director General, Social Care, Local Government and Care Partnerships at Department of Health and Martin McShane NHS England’s director for people with long term conditions. It will bring together experts on children and young people’s mental health services and people who know about wider system transformation from education, social care and health. It will commission external advice from experts and others with experience in children and young people’s mental health.
Click here for more information about the taskforce.
Report of the work of the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Taskforce:
Future in mind: Promoting, protecting and improving our children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing was published on Tuesday 17th March as part of the Department of Health's commitment to improving mental health services for young people.
Click here for other documents related to the taskforce.
Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT)
The IAPT programme supports the frontline NHS in implementing National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines for people suffering from depression and anxiety disorders.
It was created to offer patients a realistic and routine first-line treatment, combined where appropriate with medication which traditionally had been the only treatment available. The programme was first targeted at people of working age but in 2010 was opened to adults of all ages.
From 2011, the programme's focus has broadened, following publication of Talking Therapies: a four-year plan of action, one of a suite of documents supporting No health without mental health, the cross-Government mental health strategy for people of all ages.
In the four years to April 2015:
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the nationwide roll-out of psychological therapy services for adults will be completed,
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a stand-alone programme for children and young people will be initiated, and
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models of care for people with long-term physical conditions, medically unexplained symptoms and severe mental illness will be developed.
Evidence shows this approach can save the NHS up to £272million and the wider public sector will benefit by more than £700 million.
By 31 March 2011:
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142 of the 151 Primary Care Trusts in England had a service from this programme in at least part of their area and just over 50 per cent of the adult population had access,
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3,660 new cognitive behavioural therapy workers had been trained, and
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over 600,000 people started treatment, over 350,000 completed it, over 120,000 moved to recovery and over 23,000 came off sick pay or benefits (between October 2008 and 31 March 2011).
The programme began in 2006 with Demonstration sites in Doncaster and Newham focusing on improving access to psychological therapies services for adults of working age. In 2007, 11 IAPT Pathfinders began to explore the specific benefits of services to vulnerable groups. The original Implementation Plan of 2008 and related documents can be view on the Department of Health website. Two important published 'stock takes' on progress were Realising the Benefits (2010), and `IAPT: 3 Year report; the First Million Patients` (2012).
This website is a learning and support tool for services created through the programme and includes a directory of local IAPT NHS Services offering psychological therapies for conditions including depression and anxiety
For more information about the IAPT programme, please visit http://www.iapt.nhs.uk/iapt/
NICE guidance on anti social behaviour and conduct disorders.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) have issued the clinical guidelines, Antisocial behaviour and conduct disorders in children and young people: recognition, intervention and management. This updates and replaces 'Parent-training/education programmes in the management of children with conduct disorder' (NICE technology appraisal guidance 102, published June 2006).
The guidance offers evidence-based advice on the recognition and management of conduct disorders in children and young people, which includes a recommendation that children and young people aged between 11 and 17 years are offered multimodal interventions, highlighting Multisystemic Therapy as an example.
Please visit https://www.nice.org.uk/ for more information about NICE guidelines.
Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS)
ADCS Safeguarding Pressures Research - ADCS has collected qualitative and quantitative data from local authorities in six phases spanning 2007/08 to 2017/18 to evidence and better understand changes in demand for, and provision of, children’s social care.
Phase six, published in November 2018, draws together responses from 92% (140) of all local authorities in England.
For details of the ADCS research, please visit: https://adcs.org.uk/safeguarding/article/safeguarding-pressures
Department for Education (DfE)
The Children and Social Work Act 2017 provides for the replacement of Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) with a more flexible system of multi-agency arrangements, led by the three safeguarding partners as outlined below:
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The local authority chief executive;
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The accountable officer of a clinical commissioning group;
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A chief officer of police.
Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018 provides the statutory guidance for the three safeguarding partners, who will be required to make joint safeguarding decisions to meet the needs of local children and families. They will jointly be responsible for setting out local plans to keep children safe and improve their wellbeing, and will be accountable for how well agencies work together to protect children from abuse and neglect. They will also be responsible for identifying serious child safeguarding cases which raise issues of importance in relation to the area and review cases where they consider it appropriate.
The law underpinning the new safeguarding arrangements came into effect on 29 June 2018. Local areas in England have up to 12 months from this date to develop and publish their arrangements, and a further three months to implement their plans in full. Safeguarding partners must publish their arrangements by 29 June 2019. All new local arrangements must have been implemented by 29 September 2019.
More information on this phase is available at http://innovationcsc.co.uk/multi-agency-safeguarding-reform/
Youth Justice Board (YJB)
The YJB has updated the standards for children in the youth justice system. These standards define the minimum expectation for all agencies that provide statutory services to ensure good outcomes for children in the youth justice system.
They aim to:
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provide a framework for youth justice practice and ensure that quality is maintained;
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encourage and support innovation and good practice to improve outcomes for children who commit crime;
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ensure that every child lives a safe and crime-free life, and makes a positive contribution to society;
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align with the YJB’s child first principle;
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assist the YJB and inspectorates when they assess whether youth justice services are meeting their statutory requirements.
For more information about the new standards, please visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-standards-for-youth-justice-services
i-THRIVE network
Working with CCGs, NHS Trusts and local authorities in over 70 locations in England to implement the THRIVE Framework (Wolpert., et al 2016), the i-THRIVE Programme aims to improve outcomes for children and young people’s mental health.
i-THRIVE is delivered through a partnership between the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and UCLPartners.
Please visit http://www.implementingthrive.org/ for more information.