Mental health reform welcomed by community care provider

Enabling people to live safely in the community should be the main focus of mental health reform.

That’s the message from Komplex Community, a national care provider supporting adults with complex needs including mental health, autism, learning disabilities, and neuro-disabilities.

Managing Director Lisa Hillman said the announcement in the King’s Speech that the Mental Health Act would be modernised – for the first time in 17 years – was to be welcomed.

She praised the Government’s recognition of the need to elevate mental health to the same level of priority as physical health.

However, she urged ministers to focus on bolstering community-based services, to allow more individuals access to safe, quality care within their own homes: the right environment, with the right support, and wrap-around interventions.

“Inpatient settings should not be the go-to for mental health,” she said. “Focusing on community care that is patient-specific and tailored around individual diagnoses can often yield far better outcomes. Additionally, the strain on resources such as staffing and cost is far smaller.”

Lisa Hillman also welcomed the suggestion that the use of prisons and police stations as places of safety would be scrapped.

“We have had many experiences of patients with mental health issues being recalled back into prison when due to be released because there isn’t the resource to find a suitable placement. This is a drain on what are already overcrowded prisons and causes more trauma to individuals who are not getting the care they need.

“We hope the review of both prison capacity and mental health services will lead to more joined-up care provision for vulnerable adults.”

She highlighted that over 90% of Komplex Community’s clients came from failed placements elsewhere, underscoring the urgent need for improved mental health provision, particularly for young people, as mentioned in the King’s Speech.

"We are hopeful that the Government will seek to include community-based providers in the planning process to put into place sturdier processes for individuals leaving secure, inpatient, or forensic settings.

“This would also enable us to work in harmony with the NHS to ensure every person with complex mental health needs receives the safe, quality, and effective care they deserve.”

Lisa’s comments come after the speech made in Parliament yesterday (17th July), where ministers promised to ‘ensure mental health is given the same attention and focus as physical health’ and to ‘legislate to modernise the Mental Health Act so it is fit for the 21st century’.

For more information about the services provided by Komplex Community, which works alongside selected property partners to ensure adults with complex and challenging needs are supported in their own homes with a round-the-clock care team that is clinically led, visit www.komplexcommunity.co.uk