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Short-changed: spending on prison mental health care

Short-changed: spending on prison mental health care
Short-changed: spending on prison mental health care
Last year, £20.8 million was spent on mental health care in prisons through inreach teams. This is 11% of total prison health care spending or just over £300 for each member of the prison population. Prison inreach teams aim to provide the specialist mental health services to people in prison that are provided by community-based mental health teams for the population at large. But inreach teams have been hindered by limited resourcing, constraints imposed by the prison environment, difficulties in ensuring continuity of care and wide variations in local practice. Government policy for prison health care is based on the principle of equivalence. This means that standards of care for people in prison should be the same as those available in the community at large, relative to need. The level of need for mental health care in prisons is particularly high, because of the much greater prevalence of mental illness, especially severe mental illness, among prisoners than among people of working age in the general population. While more is spent per head on mental health care in prisons than in the wider community, this is not nearly enough to accommodate this much higher level of need. The resources currently available for mental health care in prisons are only about a third of the amount required to deliver the policy objective of equivalence. Spending on prison mental health care also varies widely across the country. In London and in the North East, Yorkshire and Humber, the NHS spends more than twice as much per prisoner than it does in the East Midlands and the South West. This variation cannot be explained by different levels of need or costs: it amounts to a postcode lottery in prison mental health care. Major investment is needed in the overall level of provision for mental health care in prisons and in its geographical allocation if equivalence is ever to be achieved
Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health
Brooker, Charlie
e0024993-9935-4af8-8409-031aabcd590c
Duggan, Sean
ed095f33-d373-41a4-a927-e18ebaa2cf99
Fox, Clare
a05950f1-764e-44a4-af84-90666a989811
Mills, Alice
16d8c043-116a-4e85-aaf5-e7f705428a77
Parsonage, Michael
eb84df8b-0d8e-4956-89dd-452a982bf2d3
Brooker, Charlie
e0024993-9935-4af8-8409-031aabcd590c
Duggan, Sean
ed095f33-d373-41a4-a927-e18ebaa2cf99
Fox, Clare
a05950f1-764e-44a4-af84-90666a989811
Mills, Alice
16d8c043-116a-4e85-aaf5-e7f705428a77
Parsonage, Michael
eb84df8b-0d8e-4956-89dd-452a982bf2d3

Brooker, Charlie, Duggan, Sean, Fox, Clare, Mills, Alice and Parsonage, Michael (2008) Short-changed: spending on prison mental health care , London, UK. Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, 16pp.

Record type: Book

Abstract

Last year, £20.8 million was spent on mental health care in prisons through inreach teams. This is 11% of total prison health care spending or just over £300 for each member of the prison population. Prison inreach teams aim to provide the specialist mental health services to people in prison that are provided by community-based mental health teams for the population at large. But inreach teams have been hindered by limited resourcing, constraints imposed by the prison environment, difficulties in ensuring continuity of care and wide variations in local practice. Government policy for prison health care is based on the principle of equivalence. This means that standards of care for people in prison should be the same as those available in the community at large, relative to need. The level of need for mental health care in prisons is particularly high, because of the much greater prevalence of mental illness, especially severe mental illness, among prisoners than among people of working age in the general population. While more is spent per head on mental health care in prisons than in the wider community, this is not nearly enough to accommodate this much higher level of need. The resources currently available for mental health care in prisons are only about a third of the amount required to deliver the policy objective of equivalence. Spending on prison mental health care also varies widely across the country. In London and in the North East, Yorkshire and Humber, the NHS spends more than twice as much per prisoner than it does in the East Midlands and the South West. This variation cannot be explained by different levels of need or costs: it amounts to a postcode lottery in prison mental health care. Major investment is needed in the overall level of provision for mental health care in prisons and in its geographical allocation if equivalence is ever to be achieved

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Published date: 27 May 2008

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 71128
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/71128
PURE UUID: a083bed4-c611-40f9-ab30-e4c3de52979b

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 21 Jan 2010
Last modified: 22 Jul 2022 17:08

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Contributors

Author: Charlie Brooker
Author: Sean Duggan
Author: Clare Fox
Author: Alice Mills
Author: Michael Parsonage

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