Mental health professional bodies today
welcomed the close of the public consultation on the Bamford Review
- but said the Executive has much more work to do if the ethos of
Bamford is to be applied to mental health and learning disability
services.
Six years after the Bamford Review was
commissioned, the Executive’s commitment to implementation remains
disappointingly light on detail, missing a once in a generation
opportunity to create world-class mental health and learning
disability services. The actions the Executive has promised
will be impossible to implement without further funding.
The British Association of Social Workers, the
British Psychological Society Division of Clinical Psychology, the
College of Occupational Therapists, the Royal College of Nursing,
and the Royal College of Psychiatrists said the 107-page
consultation document commits to very few of the recommendations of
the 13 Bamford reports.
While they welcome a commitment to work across
the Executive to better the lives of people with mental health
problems and learning disabilities and tackle social exclusion,
there is serious concern about whether and how this will
happen.
In particular:
- There is not enough money in the budget to
implement even the recommendations the Executive has signed up
to;
- The recommendation of cutting waiting times
for talking therapies is welcome, but the need for trained staff to
achieve this is not addressed;
- Bamford made the point that mental health and
learning disability services are understaffed across all areas. How
workforce needs will be met is not addressed;
- Proposed changes to legislation ignore the
Bamford recommendation for single capacity and mental health law,
instead proposing a two-stage process. This is likely to have a
negative rather than positive effect.
For further information, please contact Liz Fox or Deborah
Hart in the Communications Department.
Telephone: 020 7235 2351 Extensions. 6298 or 6127
Note to editors:
For more information please contact Liz Main. Tel: 07711 558 296. E-mail: lmain@nirelanddiv.rcpsych.ac.uk