Mr Norman Lamb
Member of Parliament for North Norfolk
Unit 4, The Garden Centre
Nursery Drive
Norwich Road
North Walsham
NR28 0DR
Ref: 2013/1338-Beva001-WW
Dear Mr Lamb,
Thank you for your letter dated 14th of May in relation to the needs of people caring for someone with a mental health problem. I would like to start by saying that we completely share the concerns raised with you by Penny and Wendy. I can confirm that their concerns are shared by many other carers of people with a mental health problem.
I am happy to provide you with the background to the current situation as I understand it. Norwich and Central Norfolk Mind has operated a specialist Mental Heath Carer Support Service since 2006. This service has assisted hundreds of carers of people with mental health problems and currently supports over 130 individual carers. We believe it to be an essential and very effective service.
During 2012 Norfolk County Council (NCC) made a decision to tender for a new county-wide Carer Support Service commencing in July 2013. We, along with many other providers of carer support services, were given notice that our contracts would end on June 30th 2013. In late 2012 and early 2013 we provided feedback on the proposed new service specification supplied by Norfolk County Council. The service specification described a model of carer support that included no specialist mental health carer support (although carers of people with a mental health problem are identified in the document).
We continually expressed our view that carers of people with a mental health problem both wanted and needed a specialist service. However, the final tender documents did not reflect this feedback.
In early 2013 we joined a Consortium (comprised of the existing providers of carer support across Norfolk – the Carers Agency Partnership) to submit a tender for the supply of this new service. The Consortium bid was led by Crossroads with each of the other partners being a sub-contractor. The tender was successful and this announcement was made in late April 2013. Throughout the tender development process we continually raised awareness of the need for specialist mental health carer support. As the service specification for the new service did not compel this, we were unable to secure this provision. The service to be provided from July 1st 2013 will contain no specialist mental health carer support although there is recognition that our staff (1 full time post) will have that expertise. It also appears that the overall spend on carer support by Norfolk County Council has been reduced significantly through the award of this new contract.
This means that there will be NO specialist mental health carer support funded by Norfolk County Council in Norfolk from July 1st 2013. This means a very significant change for carers of people with a mental health problem as prior to this there were NCC contracts for specialist mental health carer support delivered by West Norfolk Mind (1.5 full time posts) and Norwich Mind (4.5 full time posts).
We strongly feel that the generic service commencing on July 1st 2013 will struggle to meet the needs of mental health carers. In addition, there is already significant demand for the existing service that ends in June 2013. Norwich Mind have raised these concerns with Norfolk County Council (we asked for funding to extend the current service by 3 months but this was rejected), and with the Norwich CCG. We have made an application to the Big Lottery for funding to continue this service and have agreed to invest funding from our Reserves to operate a smaller specialist carers mental health service until the end of 2013 but this will have nowhere near the capacity of the current service.
I would be grateful if these issues could be raised as appropriate and I would like to re-iterate that there remains a very strong argument for specialised mental health carer support and we are committed to finding a way to continue supplying this whilst contributing to the new generic carer support service.
I hope I have outlined the position clearly and I would be more than happy to provide further information and support any action you feel able to take.
Yours Sincerely
Peter Gianfrancesco
Chief Executive
Norwich & Central Norfolk MindStatistics: Posted by wendy — 16 Jun 2013, 09:28
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