This is a different kind of consultation. This is the ACP-UK CIC Board of Directors asking members what you consider to be the priorities for action by ACP-UK, what strategies we should adopt and what action you think we should take. We want to represent clinical psychologists appropriately and effectively so we need your views and recommendations, preferably before the end of March.

The NHS long-term plan (England – formerly known as the 10-year plan) was published on 7th January. It sets out the current Government’s and NHS Management’s ambitions for the service over the next 10 years. Whilst we do not know how long the current Government will survive, past experience suggests that long term plans tend to be taken over and developed by successive Governments with some tweaking of the financing and priorities (the exception was Margaret Thatcher’s introduction of an internal market in healthcare in 1990). Technically this plan is a plan for the NHS in England. The planning and management of health services in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales has been devolved to the relevant assemblies but it is likely that the plan’s proposals will influence developments in those countries as well.

The plan itself is easily accessible on-line. Click here where you can either download the whole plan (136 pages!) or a summary (2 pages) or read it on-line.

The Kings Fund have published a careful summary of the plan and what it means. It is easy to read and can be accessed here. As the Kings Fund explains, mental health services are one of the plan’s priorities:

“There are two significant commitments to developing new models of care. The first is to create a comprehensive offer for children and young people, from birth to age 25, with a view to tackling problems with transitions of care. The second is to redesign core community mental health services by 2023/24, reinforcing components such as psychological therapies, physical health care and employment support, as well as introducing personalised care and restoring substance misuse support within NHS mental health services. These commitments will be backed up by new waiting time standards covering emergency mental health services by 2020, children and young people’s mental health services and, over the next decade, adult community mental health treatment.”

There is also a strong focus on improving care for people with learning disabilities and autism.“Commitments include increasing access to support for children and young people with an autism diagnosis, developing new models of care to provide care closer to home and investing in intensive, crisis and forensic community support. The aim is that, by 2023/24, inpatient provision for people with learning difficulties or autism will have reduced to less than half of the 2015 level.”

However, the plan recognises that shortages of trained staff are the biggest challenge facing the NHS at the moment: “The plan explicitly recognises the scale of this challenge and sets out a number of specific measures to address it. However, many wider changes will not be finalised until after the 2019 Spending Review, when the budget for training, education and continuing professional development (CPD) is set. To inform these reforms, NHS Improvement, Health Education England and NHS England will establish a cross-sector national workforce group and publish a workforce implementation plan later in 2019.”

The BPS’ response to the plan did not comment explicitly on training and employment issues but did comment on the challenge of achieving parity of esteem between physical and mental health services: see it here

Other organisations have already published comments on the plan. For example BABCP said that it “supports continued funding of IAPT training places to meet the increased demand for psychological therapists”: see it here

An interesting element in the plan is a recognition of the need for better clinical leadership. As the Kings Fund says: “While the vision is for leadership that is both compassionate and diverse, its [the plan’s] current assessment is that, while this is present in some parts of the NHS, it is ‘not yet commonplace’.” However new efforts are being made and a document published on 30th January this year is particularly relevant: see it here. Look out for the case study on becoming a clinical leader provided by Michael Witney, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Executive Lead for Patient Experience, Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust.

What will be particularly useful will be examples of service developments that you have made which have gone well and you are proud of, new ways of working which demonstrate clinical psychologists’ creativity and capacity to innovate, and any proposals and new ideas that we can share with journalists and other media. Don’t worry about the reactions you might get from your managers or employer, we can anonymise or present information in novel ways if necessary.

Bernard Kat
ACP-UK Director and Legal Lead

Members

You can access the survey by logging into the members area of the website here and viewing the consultations tab.

Non-members

If you’d like to take part in ACP-UK consultations then you can sign up as a member by clicking the button below.