The Community Mental Health Framework for Adults and Older Adults

The community mental health transformation programme is already well under way across the country, based on the short guide (PDF), published by NHS England in 2019. That document is a summary of this full guidance. At the NCCMH, we are certain that the Community Mental Health Framework full guidance will be of huge benefit to services and service users across the country, with this work already proving to be influential. We hope that these documents will support people as they develop their new community models.

Over the last 20 years, community mental health care teams have taken a central role in delivering mental health services. The increasing range of mental health services has resulted in some fragmentation of services and discontinuity of care in local communities. This has created barriers for people trying to access care and more variation in the care they receive.

This framework will enable health and social care providers and commissioners to move towards a new place-based community mental health model that provides more effective support, care and treatment for adults within a community network. The guidance explains how to implement the framework and evaluate its impact on the overall quality of care.

The framework promotes an approach in which people with mental health problems are active participants in making positive changes, rather than passive recipients of disjointed, inconsistent and episodic care.

Implementing the framework will also lead to:

• more effective allocation of resources
• improved integration of services
• better support for the primary care workforce 
• development of people’s personal skills, and building of resources and available assets
• access to support, care and treatment that meets people’s needs within their communities and across all organisations and sectors.

Community traditionally means the geographical space in which people live. People also form their own communities based around ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, occupation or interests. Whether community is a geographical location or a group in which people find or place themselves, it’s the context for people’s lives.