Charities 'should take mental health care co-ordinator role'

According to a report released by the Centre for Social Justice, the co-ordination of mental healthcare for users should be outsourced from social workers and NHS colleagues to the third sector. 

That was a key conclusion from a report today on reforming mental health from the Centre for Social Justice, the think-tank set up by work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

Currently, patients who receive specialist care under the Care Programme Approach have their care managed and brokered by “care co-ordinators”, typically social workers or NHS professionals working for mental health trusts.

However, the report said this created a conflict of interest on the grounds that trusts provide services directly, and backed giving this role to voluntary sector organisations that did not themselves provide services. It said third sector organisations often had a more holistic appreciation of service users’ wider social, as well as clinical, needs, and may be better able to source creative support for people, compared with trust co-ordinators.

Steve Shrubb, director of the NHS Confederation’s Mental Health Network, said there was scope for greater third sector involvement in mental health services.

“My network is broad church, so I need no persuading that there’s no one organisation that can solve all the problems. You need different organisations working in different ways and we need to focus on co-operation and partnership as much as on altering the marketplace.”

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