00:00Well this is the biggest redesign of the way we deliver mental health services probably for a
00:05generation, providing care and support and services in the community to prevent people
00:11reaching mental health crisis in the first place. At a time when we've seen rising mental health
00:17demand it is crucial we do much more early intervention and that's what these community
00:22centres and also dedicated emergency departments will be able to do. Mental health support is set
00:29to move closer to where people live with 100 new community centres planned across England.
00:35They are intended to make early help easier to access while a further 59 emergency departments
00:40will provide specialist care for people experiencing a crisis. The first sites are due to open this
00:47autumn. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said nobody should be left to struggle with their mental health
00:52alone but every day thousands of people are waiting months for help then finding the only door open to
00:58them is a busy A&E. He went on to say that these new centres will be a lifeline for
01:03so many. They will
01:04bring NHS services closer to home making it easier to get support before problems get worse and ensuring
01:11those in crisis get the right care in the right place. Well we've got 340 million in being invested
01:17in delivering the expanded centres and services but it's also about existing mental health teams and
01:24staff being able to work in a different way. So being able to work together in the community and
01:29also alongside other support service could be housing advice could be other kind of debt support and help
01:35and the other sorts of things that might help it might be triggering people and might be causing
01:39additional difficulties. If you can bring all of those services together in a safe place that people
01:45could just walk in get help when they need it actually do much better prevention and that's what I've heard
01:51from some of the mental health staff who are working here. The community centres will offer walk-in support
01:58without a referral. Mental health and specialist teams will work alongside GPs, councils, voluntary organisations
02:06and families with links to wider support including housing and employment. Some centres will be newly built
02:13while others could be based in libraries, banks and other community locations. The aim is to help people
02:19get support before their mental health reaches crisis point. We've been rolling out a hundred community
02:25mental health centres. There'll be some opening this autumn, others in the spring. It will be a rolling
02:30programme to make sure that we can get them across the country and also similarly with the emergency
02:36departments as well. So we're doing this step by step. We want as many people as possible to be reached.
02:43This has got to be about a shift towards prevention so that you stop people reaching crisis rather than just
02:50leaving it till it's too late. Dr Nick Broughton, National Priority Programme Director for Mental Health,
02:56Learning Disability and Neurodevelopmental Conditions, said the rollout of more community mental health centres
03:03and dedicated mental health emergency departments will build on this work, strengthening both early support
03:09in the community and care for people in crisis, while helping services work together more effectively
03:14around people's needs. The 59 new mental health emergency departments will provide same-day specialist support
03:22for people in crisis who are medically fit and do not need treatment in A&E. They will work closely
03:28with
03:28emergency departments, ambulance services and police, providing a setting where people can be assessed quickly
03:35and connected to ongoing care. The NHS has already started preparing for winter pressures. The NHS
03:41chief exec has already been in touch with trusts across the country about the preparations that they
03:46need to do. Obviously what happened this last winter I think had made huge progress already in terms of
03:54reducing the wait times in accident and emergency but we know that there is a lot more to do here.
04:00The expansion would more than double the number of dedicated emergency departments in England
04:06taking the total to 82. The first facilities are due to open from autumn with further sites following
04:12from March 2027. The government says this is the first phase of a wider programme to shift mental health
04:19care towards prevention. Its forthcoming mental health strategy is expected to set out the next stage
04:25including the role of schools, employers, councils and voluntary organisations.
04:30For people across England, the intended change is earlier access to support in the community alongside
04:36a dedicated route for those who need urgent mental health care. Brian Dow, deputy chief executive at
04:43Rethink Mental Illness said everyone should be able to access mental health support in their local community
04:49when and where they need it. The expansion of neighbourhood mental health centres is a vital step towards
04:55making this a reality, building on the promising results of existing pilot sites. He said bringing together
05:03treatment and wider support services under one roof, these centres can transform experiences of care,
05:10helping people to access support earlier and preventing them from reaching crisis point.
05:14So
Comments