NHS bosses meeting to decide future of Manchester’s crisis-hit mental health trust

NHS bosses meeting to decide future of Manchester’s crisis-hit mental health trust

Thursday 19 Th November, 2015

BY JENNIFER WILLIAMS

The Trust Development Authority will give its verdict on how services should be provided in the city after Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust admitted it was ‘no longer viable as an independent organisation’.

mental health model menThe MEN revealed how the trust was slashing £1.5m in frontline mental health services

NHS chiefs are meeting this afternoon to decide the future of Manchester’s crisis-hit mental health trust.

The Trust Development Authority will give its verdict on how services should be provided in the city after Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust admitted it was ‘no longer viable as an independent organisation’.

The MEN revealed how the trust was slashing £1.5m in frontline mental health services after finding it could not balance its books by next April .

After our story Labour called for health secretary Jeremy Hunt to intervene – while patient groups warned the planned cuts to community care, which are expected to directly hit more than 600 patients, could lead to a rise in suicides.

Now board members of the TDA – which oversees NHS trusts across England and decides how those with major issues should be restructured – are meeting in London to decide the trust’s future.

Ultimately, that could involve a merger with a neighbouring health body.

The health trust has been in discussions with the TDA for some time over its future, having faced major financial difficulties over a number of years.

It had needed to save nearly £7m this year – £2m of which was a shortfall carried over from 2014, a gap bosses blame on ‘challenging’ NHS funding pressures.

Some £2.2m in savings are down to huge redundancy costs associated with the council cutting mental health contracts, as the town hall trimmed its own budget.

At the start of this financial year, the trust was expecting to spend £3.5m placing patients in private beds.

Trust bosses told councillors last month that they had found less than half the savings needed by April – so were axing a range of frontline services.

But another £2.2m in savings is still needed needed, with the trust admitting it still does not know how they will be found.

Councillors ordered the health trust to carry out a consultation into the planned cuts, which previously it had not intended to do.

The trust initially suggested there might be legal issues with carrying it out, but councillors gave that short shrift.

It is understood that consultation will now take place, although a timetable has not yet been drawn up.

Credit: BY JENNIFER WILLIAMS Manchester Evening News

 

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