Spending the NTW Pound Guy Pilkington

The Alliance Clinical Commissioning Groups have started a listening exercise “Deciding Together”, to look at how some of NTW’s services could be provided in the future, for todays discussion we will be talking about: Adult Specialist Community Services Adult in Patient Services

Today we won’t be specifically looking at children or young people’s, older people’s or learning disability services, but we are still keen to hear your views.

Today we will be doing an exercise called “Spending The NTW Pound” to help us make important decisions about these services in the future. We want people to think about different ways we might spend Mental Health money to improve care for patients, their carers and families. So please be brave and be bold

Although today we will be talking about the money, however what we are keen to understand is how we can invest money in the future to provide the best quality care and outcomes for people with mental health problems

3 The Mental Health Programme Board is committed to improving mental health services. Today’s meeting is your opportunity for you to have your say, and how you would make some of the challenging decisions about investment in mental health services, it won’t be easy, but it will help us to understand your views

For the services we are looking at today, Newcastle and Gateshead CCG spend approximately £32 million every year. It is really important we spend this money in the best way in the future. Every year services are expected to make savings of about 4% so £1 today will only be about 93p in 2 years time.

The government is investing more money in the NHS this year, but there are lots of areas where this money is needed. The government does expect Clinical Commissioning Groups to spend at least the increase in funding on mental health to ensure “parity of esteem”, that is patients should receive the same level of care for their mental health as they do for their physical health.

Government says Clinical Commissioning Groups should spend about a further 6p per £1 on mental health, however.

The governments plans for the NHS identify clear areas that are a national priority: Dementia Strategy Improving access to psychological therapies – for mild to moderate mental health problems. Child and adolescent mental health services Early intervention in Psychosis.

Clinical Commissioning Groups are also seeing some mental health costs rising including Continuing Health Care S117

Over the last 10 years mental health services have greatly improved, with the development of crisis services, psychological therapies, early intervention services etc. However there is much that we can still do to continue this improvement and today is just one of the opportunities for you to get involved, and we really welcome your999 input

So our challenge today is to look at how we currently spend money on NTW specialist community and impatient services, and to look at potential new ways we might meet peoples mental health needs in the future.