Safety recommendation
It is recommended that NHS England requires Clinical Commissioning Groups to demonstrate that the budget identified for current children and young people’s services – those delivering care up until the age of 18 – is spent only on this group.
Response:
- Funding for Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services will form part of the £2.3bn ringfenced funding identified for Mental Health within the NHS Long Term Plan, and the NHS has made a commitment that funding for CYPMHS will grow faster than both overall NHS funding and total mental health spending.
- NHS England continues to require all CCGs to meet the Mental Health Investment Standard. As part of the 18/19 planning process, CCGs were told that allocations must be spent on the purposes for which they were originally intended and cannot be used to cross-subsidise other services or supplant existing spend. To support this, an indicative estimate of CCG level allocations for the Children and Young People’s Mental Health transformation funding, including CYP eating disorder services, was made available. CCG plans were scrutinised as part of the 18/19 financial planning process to ensure they planned to increase spending in line with transformation funding increases and this is being monitored and scrutinised as part of in-year financial reporting.
- NHS England and NHS improvement are working together to increase transparency and the reporting requirements for both commissioner spend and for provider income. There will be increased focus on provider income analysis as part of the 2019/20 planning round and 2019/20 reporting processes.
Timescale: already underway.
Response received on 1 October 2018 and updated on 12 March 2019.