Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health

Prison mental health services short-changed, says new report

27 May 2008

Prison mental health services in England face a postcode lottery in funding and get only one-third of the money they need, says a report published today by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.

Short-changed, produced together with Lincoln University, shows that prison inreach teams get £300 in funding for every prisoner in England. This is only about one-third of what they need to offer the same level of service as community mental health services.

Short-changed finds that funding for prison mental health is twice as high in London and in Yorkshire and the North East than it is in either the East Midlands or the South West. This wide variation cannot be explained by higher costs or different needs between regions.

The average prison inreach team now has four staff. To help all the prisoners who need mental health care this needs to increase to 12. Some 4,700 prisoners now get support from inreach teams. But this is much less than the estimated one in twelve prisoners who has severe mental health problems.

Professor Charlie Brooker, from Lincoln University, said: "The creation of inreach has finally brought mental health care to prisons. For the first time prisoners with severe mental health problems get some support. But there are no national guidelines for how inreach teams should work, how they should be staffed and how much funding they need to achieve equivalence. Primary care trusts need to begin funding services based on need not on historic levels of devolved central funding."

Sean Duggan, Sainsbury Centre director of prisons and criminal justice, said: "We have found worrying inequalities in prison mental health care spending across England. Many inreach teams are struggling to offer a decent service in the face of inadequate funding and very high levels of need among prisoners. As a result they can do little more than assess people and try to prepare them for life in the community.

"The NHS needs to end this postcode lottery in prison mental health spending. We need to see a major boost in spending on inreach across the country, especially in those areas that are falling behind. National guidance on inreach team staffing would help to reduce the gap and improve services."