10 January 2022

Over the past two and a half years, CNWL has worked to improve adult community mental health services for patients and carers as part of implementation of the NHS Long Term Plan (LTP).

The LTP promises that nationally, an extra £975 million per year will be put towards Community Mental Health by 2023/24. This aims to give 370,000 patients across England, with severe mental health problems, access to a new integrated model of primary and community mental health care. CNWL has been working hard to support its part of that national programme.

The London boroughs and Milton Keynes have been working with patients and carers to design new hub models, based on national guidelines from NHS England and NHS Improvement in the new Community Mental Health Framework, and CNWL is an ‘Early Implementer’ of this new hub model. This means we’ll be replacing the old ‘Care Programme Approach’ (CPA) framework, whilst retaining good care coordination and high-quality care planning.

A 5-minute video from NHS England and NHS Improvement, outlining how this Community Mental Health Transformation will work, is available here.

What will our new model of care mean for service users and carers?

  • Better outcomes with greater focus on treatment
  • Easier to access, better connected care with the patient at the centre
  • Faster access to mental health treatment when people need it to prevent relapse
  • Service designed based on what the local community needs, so care is more personalised
  • More consistent high quality of care across the community  
  • Care is recovery focussed, helping patients stay well in their community
  • Service users will create a care plan with their clinician to reflect their needs and goals.

You can read the Trust’s full position statement on the move away from CPA here.

CNWL’s move away from CPA is supported by various projects including:

This piece of work currently applies to staff and patients in all Community Adult Mental Health Services, who are expected to formally move away from using CPA in 2022. You can keep track of where each of our boroughs are at with this transformation by checking our Community Adult Mental Health Transformation programme.

Other services who use CPA will review and learn from Adult Community Mental Health and will await further detail from NHS England before putting in place their own plans. We will keep everyone posted on any of these future developments too.

You can find answers to frequently asked questions about this move away from CPA here.