Safety recommendation
HSSIB recommends that NHS England reviews and updates its inpatient children and young people’s mental health services specifications and commissioning guidance to ensure they support developmentally appropriate, needs-based transitions. Any changes to service delivery will require a review of funding lines to enable successful implementation.
Response:
NHS England support this recommendation and will incorporate it in the ongoing review of inpatient children and young people’s service specifications but this will require additional funding to be secured in a future spending review first.
Actions planned to deliver the safety recommendation:
Update inpatient children and young people’s service specification and commissioning guidance, by: to be confirmed as dependent on additional resources. Organisational lead: NHS England. Resources in place: none at this stage. Other dependencies identified: Additional government resource to implement the service specifications. Additional comments: NHS England has developed a draft service specification for children and young peoples inpatient services, and has supported the 17 NHS-led Provider Collaboratives to do a gap analysis against the revised specifications and guidance. NHS England will require additional resource to implement new service specifications, which is subject to government spending review decisions.
Response received on 7 March 2025.