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By Nicky Morgan MP - 21st January 2011
The choice agenda is helping to extend a key part of the NHS reforms to mental health services, says Nicky Morgan MP.
This week the government published the Health and Social Care Bill – a landmark piece of legislation that will modernise the NHS, with the intention that our health services will continue to be available for everyone, free-of-charge, and based on need and not ability to pay. The Bill will give control over the commissioning of NHS services to frontline doctors and nurses and refocus those services on the results they actually deliver for patients, while cutting waste and bureaucracy.
One of the most important aspects of the proposed reforms will be their effect on the continuity and quality of care received by people with mental health problems. The government's Mental Health Strategy, due to be published early this year, will emphasise the interdependence of physical and mental health and the need for a balanced approach to investment to achieve improved health outcomes for all age groups.
The strategy will encompass the twin objectives of improvement of public mental health and wellbeing, as well as ensuring the delivery of high quality patient centred outcomes by NHS health services. Last year I attended the AGM of Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust to hear how mental health services are working for my constituents. As an active member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on mental health, I will be engaging in discussions with parliamentary colleagues involved in the reforms, service users, carers and mental health professionals to find out how we can ensure that the new proposals are made to work for mental health.
The APPG on mental health works hard to raise the profile of mental health in Parliament and holds frequent meetings and events to promote understanding of key issues. In the last Parliament, the group produced a powerful survey on the mental health of MPs, which concluded that the law forcing MPs to give up their seat for life if they are sectioned under the Mental Health Act for six months is discriminatory and urgently needs to be changed. As a group member, I will be looking to promote the recommendations made in this report, in particular around the need to challenge stigma and discrimination in Parliament.
Another key mental health issue the APPG is keen to raise awareness of is schizophrenia. 1 in 100 people are affected by schizophrenia and they should all have choice and access to the best possible care.
An interactive map was recently published by the Choosing Well? Campaign (www.choosingwell.co.uk), a Janssen initiative in association with the leading mental health charities Rethink and SANE, and is designed to highlight local and regional disparities in care currently being provided for people in England with schizophrenia.
The website brings together, for the first time, key data from multiple organisations and sources and thereby provides the broadest picture yet of how schizophrenia is currently being managed in England. Whilst encouraging best practice in the management of schizophrenia, the website highlights the role that 'choice' can play in ensuring the best possible standard of care and positive long term outcomes. This choice agenda is helping to extend a key part of the NHS reforms to mental health services, enabling people to make decisions on how and where they receive treatment.
It is clear that more work needs to be done to end the postcode lottery of treatment for schizophrenia and it is vitally important that equality of access and delivery of care take centre stage in the government's Mental Health Strategy, and in the Health and Social Care Bill.
Nicky Morgan was elected as Conservative MP for Loughborough in 2010. A trained solicitor, she is currently PPS to universities and science minister David Willetts.
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