Mr Patsy McGlone (Mid Ulster): To ask the Minister of Health to detail what plans he has for a review of mental health services across Health and Social Care Trusts.
Minister of Health: The Mental Health Strategy 2021-2031 sets out a vision for the future direction of mental health services in Northern Ireland, with a number of actions currently underway to enable reform and improvement of existing provision. A key element of this work involves reviewing existing mental health services to identify priority areas for improvement.
For example, the recently established Regional Mental Health Service (Mental Health Strategy Action 31) is currently undertaking a review of existing community mental health provision with a view to improving regional consistency and removing unwarranted variation.
To date, this work has involved completion of a mapping exercise to scope existing provision, and a review of comparable community mental health arrangements in other regions. A task and finish group has established to analyse the outputs from this work and to progress the design of a regionally consistent model, which it is anticipated will be completed by Spring 2026.
In parallel to work on implementing the Mental Health Strategy, individual health trusts will also undertake reviews of mental health provision within their areas as part of a continuous improvement process.
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