Does the NHS fund Mind, Papyrus or The Samaritans?

[RaffertyBear]

I was wondering if someone could explain something to me please, or at least help me to understand it a little better. Last night I was browsing through instagram and I came across a post regarding talking therapies support from an NHS account. There was several comments where people had tried to access the NHS but were instead being directed to Mind, Papyrus and the Samaritans rather than NHS services.

I have googled and it does say that NHS Business Partners choose the Samaritans as one of their charity partners, but it doesn't seem to show me anywhere where they have been funded by the NHS to provide a service.

I feel really uneasy about this personally because these three organisations are all charities, and surely, the NHS should not be deflecting the patients that need to see them onto charities where there is little to no continuity of care, no prescribing other than social prescribing (Mind only I believe), and very little access to the range of therapies that the NHS can provide.

I absolutely think all of these charities are essential, particularly at the moment, but I am confused as to why NHS organisations are signposting people to them. This surely then has a knock on affect on the cuts to NHS mental health budgets (as prospective patients are not getting anywhere near to being put into the NHS system) and at the same time has a huge impact on these charities needing to massively increase their fundraising to provide frontline services.

The charities are vital, but I feel that with this happening, they are all likely to go under due to being unable to cope with the pressure being placed on them by having to take NHS workload in addition to providing the crisis services they do provide. At the same time, NHS budgets are being slashed. I feel that this is going to lead to an explosion in a lack of mental health care for the population at some point in the (possibly, very near) future.

I would love to know whether I have interpreted this wrong and if there is another explanation that I have missed. Would anyone be able to shed any light on this please, or am I going down the correct line?

I will absolutely be contacting my MP to raise this if I am correct about the situation, but I would like to get the facts straight in my head before I do so.

The local Minds are independent charities; they pay a fee to 'Big Mind' to use their branding etc. So local arrangements will differ between organisations.

The NHS / health trusts may commission particular services from any local organisation. So for example a local Mind might offer the IAPT (talking therapy) provision through a commissioning arrangement with the local health trust.

But in general, the NHS is wildly underfunded and can't meet the mental health needs of the population. If you're lucky, you might live in an area where a local charity is filling some of the gap to a decent standard. It's unusual though.

Thank you. I guess my question is, is the NHS underfunding because they are sending people to Samaritans, Mind and Papyrus? I.e. Our Local Crisis line was advising people to call Samaritans recently, I have also heard (well actually it was a friend in my house) that NHS 111 have been advising this instead of arranging an assessment.

I am not entirely sure what the Samaritan's could have done for my friend who was having a severe psychotic episode and ended up in Psychiatric Intensive Care for two weeks.

The NHS isn't one homogeneous thing. It is a series of services funded by ccgs.

It is likely some charities will be paid for providing services. For example talking therapies.

www.kingsfund.org.uk/audio-video/how-does-nhs-in-england-work

This might help understand NHS funding a bit

Signposting to third sector organisations is considered an intervention and is used to manage referrals that don't meet the threshold... as the service gets more stretched the threshold rises. But in some areas NHS trusts partner with third sector organisations to 'bid' for the contracts to run services (because the whole thing is a market place now).