Conclusion and next steps
As we move from the 10-year health plan to implementation, our engagement with trust leaders and stakeholders makes clear there are a number of shared actions we must prioritise in the short and medium term. These would put the NHS and its partners in the best position to build on the work undertaken in recent years to deliver high quality, sustainable mental health services over the next decade in line with the three shifts. Those three shifts see care moving from hospitals to the community, from treatment to prevention, and from analogue to digital.
In this briefing, we have set out the actions that will enable NHS mental health care to be:
Values driven:
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Delivering consistently high quality and safe care
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Advancing race equality
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Establishing parity of esteem within national policy
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Improving value, productivity and quality through capital investment
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Ensuring adequate funding to enable high-quality mental health care
Patient centred:
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Getting pathways and models of care right
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Progressing the shift to prevention
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Harnessing data to better meet local needs
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Increasing the value that services deliver
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Expanding partnership working for better value and outcomes
Staff enabled:
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Building capacity to better meet growing and changing demand
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Enabling innovation and improvement
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Realising the potential of technology to improve care and outcomes
The next three years is a critical window of opportunity to ensure the mental health sector can continue to improve and deliver safe, high-quality services. We need to rise to the challenge of ensuring we better and more equitably meet the full spectrum of mental health needs in our communities. We can, and must, take the opportunity to better serve individuals, their families and wider society.