£134m commitment to transform mental health in Greater Manchester

Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester

A huge £134m action plan to start to transform mental health in Greater Manchester has been launched.

The investment - the biggest and most ambitious of its kind in the country – aims not only to put mental health on an equal footing with physical health but to start to deliver Greater Manchester’s vision of making sure that no child who needs mental health support will be turned away.

And with nearly 60 per cent of the cash - £80m – supporting the mental health needs of children, young people and new mums, it also reflects the commitment to increase the proportion of the budget focused towards young people.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has described the programme as “potentially life-changing” for thousands of people.

The wide-ranging, four-year programme aims to: 

• Make sure thousands more children can get support where and when they need it, with the ambition that ultimately no child who needs mental health support will be turned away
• Support all schools in meeting the mental health and wellbeing needs of their students 
• Help new mums who experience significant mental health problems – babies and children whose mums suffer poor mental health can be affected through their whole life. 
• Stop people who need hospital care for a mental health problem having to go out of Greater Manchester when the service is available here
• Make sure everyone in a mental health crisis is able to get immediate support (and that no one ends up in a police cell when they are in mental health crisis)
• Help people with serious mental illness have their physical health better looked after – at the moment those people die on average 15-20 years earlier
• Offer extra support to the long-term unemployed or people who have mental health problems and risk losing their job
• Reduce adult suicides by 10%
• Make Greater Manchester the best place to live with dementia in the UK. Older people will receive diagnosis and referral within six weeks; by 2020/2021, significantly more people will get a named coordinator of care and a care plan and at least one annual review of that care plan

The announcement is being made by the Mayor and Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership, the body overseeing the devolution of the £6bn health and care budget in the city region, ahead of the Partnership’s Board meeting on Friday 28 July.

Mr Burnham, said: “If we are honest NHS mental health services have not always been what we wanted them to be in Greater Manchester.”

“As we transform the way we spend on mental health – and increase the proportion spent on children and young people – we’ll begin to see some real change. If we’re to build a 21st century NHS here it would be one that turns no child away who needs mental health support and is based on the principle of true parity between mental and physical health.”

“We must go further if we’re to help every person here get on in life. It’s not enough to tackle mental health services alone. The pressures of debt, poverty, low paid and insecure jobs, poor housing, homelessness and loneliness all have a massive impact. I want everyone here to reach their potential, and this is why we’re tackling these areas as well.”