Anyone experiencing a mental health emergency will benefit from specialised mental health ambulances, more crisis services and improved health-based places of safety.
Thanks to a £150 million Government investment up to April 2025 people experiencing – or at risk of experiencing – mental health crises are to receive care and support in more appropriate settings, outside of A&E, helping to ease pressures facing the NHS.
Patients presenting with mental health problems are twice as likely to spend 12 hours or more in emergency departments than other patients. The funding will help to pay for up to 100 new mental health ambulances which will take specialist staff directly to patients to deliver support on scene or transfer them to the most appropriate place for care.
It will also fund 150 new projects centred on supporting the provision of mental health crisis response and urgent mental health care. The new projects include over 30 schemes providing crisis cafes, crisis houses and other similar safe spaces, as well as over 20 new or improved health-based places of safety which provide a safe space for people detained by the police. Improvements to NHS 111 and crisis phone lines will also be rolled out.
In the North Yorkshire and Humber region £816,000 is being provided for step down and nursing care facilities for complex dementia as well as £400,000 for mental health liaison accommodation across the integrated care systems.
Harrogate and Knaresborough MP, Andrew Jones, said: “Mental health is as important as physical health and I am pleased that the Government is taking action to support those with poor mental health.
“This funding will ensure people who are suffering can get the help they need while easing pressures on our emergency departments. I hope this investment will have long-lasting impacts on our country’s health and wellbeing.”
This new funding comes as the Government has committed to increase mental health spend to 8.9 per cent of all NHS funding.
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