Cost effective funding?

An interesting idea but then when there is finite funding cost effectiveness can be brutal and not necessarily helpful. As I listened to last Thurs debate in parliament I got the feeling that lots of things were a foot and as there was much to be pleased about but I was caught by how little things had actually changed. We are still fighting the good fight over WCA assessments and about getting parity of esteem, and good crisis care, plus many, many more issues that were clearly dear to the hearts of many of the MP’s present and with only 6 months since the last debate I was overjoyed that Mental health was back on the agenda. I have to say that I am far from agreeing with Kevan Jones that mental health debate should be an annual thing I believe that it needs to be on the agenda at least every 6 months to make any inroads into issues that relate to it.

But as the hours ticked by I became aware that actually the benches I was looking at were in fact far from full. If there were more than 20 people in the house i would be surprised and that saddens me. Is this normal for lunchtime on a Thurs, who knows but really what are we paying people for when it seems the house is all but empty for such important debates.

This aside I was drawn to comments by Kevan Jones amongst others on the matter of funding and was surprised that actually they seem to believe that the level of funding is fine it just needs to be distributed in the correct balance to be effective.

Pardon! Correct balance...

Please tell me it’s a joke, but they didn’t. Issue after issue came up about getting the right services and getting enough crisis care, or talking therapies, or hospital care, or early intervention in schools and yet they all seemed to miss the basic facts that you cannot take money from services that already have huge waiting lists or are oversubscribed in terms of occupancy rates on wards and put them into early intervention without damaging an already precariously positioned service that is not meeting the needs of the people.

Seriously how on earth can you expect people to get better by taking away the services that help and putting into ones that better prevent them getting sick in the first place?

These people are already sick, they already need the services and taking them away to better provide for those that aren’t sick but may become so, sentences those at the sharp end to almost certain misery and death.

Get a grip there needs to be a substantial increase in funding that will be used for the services that aren’t already commissioned and bolster the ones that have huge waiting lists at present.

Certainly once demand for these services has gone down then redistribute the money fine but at present these services are still all oversubscribed.

If you don’t believe me then please consider why are the wards running at over the 85% occupancy rates ( see earlier post on mental health care). Why are there waiting lists of up to a year for talking therapies, why are the people being held in police cells because of mental health issues instead of going to crisis care in hospital.

If there is plenty of money to get these services running in good shape why are they not in good shape?