We've worked with New Statesman magazine to bring together experts, including senior civil servants, politicians, opinion formers and experts from the mental health sector, to discuss the future of mental health within the NHS in England.
“There has been a tradition in trying to create a new workforce from scratch, but there is an existing workforce that can be used.”
Fiona Ballantine-Dykes, BACP Head of Professional Standards
Delegates included Claire Murdoch, the mental health director for NHS England, Liberal Democrat Peer, Lord Willis of Knaresborough, and Conservative MP Helen Whately, chair of the all-party parliamentary group for mental health.
The roundtable meeting also considered the workforce required to deliver expanded services and the role counselling and psychotherapy could play in delivering the government’s ambition to increase the number of people benefitting from psychological therapies.
Key points of the discussion included:
- how to develop and deliver the workforce needed to expand services to meet need
- how to deliver a choice of psychological therapies to clients, moving away from a system overly reliant on a small number of interventions which don’t work for everyone
- recognising that mental health problems exist far beyond the confines of the NHS and bring in broader issues such as housing and employment
You can read the full article of on the meeting on the New Statesman website or download the pdf below:
The future of mental health provision (pdf 0.7MB)
Photo courtesy of The Photo Team