PARITY of esteem” for mental health services is a worthy, if rather belated objective after nearly 67 years of the NHS.

Lib Dem ministers, including Norman Lamb as junior health minister, have been banging the drum about the need for it since last year, but of course they have been part of a government that has run down mental health services and now put them in the hands of clinical commissioning groups which clearly do not value mental health.

Mental health accounts for 23 per cent of NHS needs, but receives between 7 per cent and 14 per cent of NHS budgets in eastern England.

The new chief executive of the Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust has said that if mental health was funded as generously as acute care, the trust would be a massive £30 million per year better off.

Instead NHS England has imposed discriminatory cuts on mental health by cutting the tariff more severely than acute services.

Demand for mental healthcare is still increasing, and with resources highly stretched, patients needing emergency admission are being shipped all over the country for bog standard care in mainly private-sector beds.

Patients from Norfolk and Suffolk have been sent as far afield as Brighton, Weston Super Mare, Manchester and Harrogate — often this also uses private-sector ambulances, haemorrhaging even more NHS cash for poor-quality care.

But the cuts have not only fallen on hospital care — community services too have been cut back, with the closure of assertive outreach teams and crisis teams despite evidence showing that they can be effective in reducing risk of suicides.

In central Norfolk 79 nurses and social workers from crisis teams have been made redundant.

Three-hundred cases were left unallocated, while people assessed as needing mental healthcare are finding none allocated to them.

The team dealing with homeless people has been closed. Staff have warned that this is likely to result in avoidable deaths.

Unison has been raising concerns over these cuts for over two years, through local health scrutiny committees, detailed submissions of evidence, internal whistleblowing and two meetings with Lamb — to no avail.

This time last year Unison and campaigners marched from Ipswich to Norwich, distributing letters to every MP along the way — but received only one reply.

Staff morale in mental health is at rock bottom. The Care Quality Commission investigated last October and found the trust inadequate, but noted the care and compassion of staff. It was appalled at the poor leadership in the trust.

Our previous chief executive, whose cutbacks have led us into this situation, has now left — with a 25 per cent increase in salary — to work for the neighbouring Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Partnership Trust.

Our trust has now been placed under special measures since February, with the appointment of an “improvement director.”

Normally these are only there to monitor the trust, but in this case the director has been given power to hire and fire.

We have said that we know what’s wrong — more front-line staff are desperately needed.

In the community staff are up against an unmanageable caseload. They should each have a maximum of 25 cases, but it is now over 70 cases each.

For more seriously ill patients with psychosis the caseload should be 15, but it’s running at 24 to 25 per person. 

The trust has 500 vacancies. Some staff who have left are now back working for agencies — up to £2.5 million per month (£30m per year) is being spent on temporary staffing. The new chief executive now says we are underfunded — but there are more cuts to come, possibly another £40m, as part of a new five-year plan.

The trust can’t take another five years of cuts. Mental health staff urgently need a change of government and a change of policy to make parity of esteem more than an empty phrase.

• This article is reprinted from Unison Eastern Region health committee newspaper Eastern Eye.