What is the purpose of North Yorkshire’s new joint board for mental health care?
Three north Yorkshire clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and the local mental health trust have agreed to set up a joint board to bring a more strategic approach to commissioning and service delivery.
The partnership board is made up of representatives of Harrogate and Rural, Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby, and Scarborough and Ryedale CCGs with Tees, Esk and Wear Valley Foundation Trust, and North Yorkshire County Council’s director of health and adult services.
The three CCGS are members of the same sustainability and transformation partnership (STP), which includes one location within the STP.
An early priority for the new board is to bring out-of-area complex care patients back into their home areas, and to move more learning disability patients back into the community under the national transforming care programme, Health Service Journal editors have revealed.
Although the CCGs do not plan to pool their £80m total mental health and learning disability budgets with the Tees, Esk and Wear Valley Foundation Trust, decisions on spending will be made jointly.
All three CCGs are expected to end 2018/19 in deficit, but nevertheless plan to raise mental health spending in line with allocation growth, and therefore meet the mental health investment standard and deliver the Five year forward view for mental health.