Community mental health services face being "dismantled" in the Capital

Exclusive: Charity leaders plan mass protest against "callous" cuts which "put lives at risk"

At work in the Redhall Community Garden. Pic courtesy of SAMH

Community mental health services face being “dismantled” in the Capital under plans to plug a £2.2m hole in its health and social care budget.

Third sector leaders are warning a range of lifeline services are being put at risk of closure, leading to fears thousands of the city’s most vulnerable residents will be left without support.

The Edinburgh Integration Joint Board (EIJB), which is jointly funded by the NHS and the city council, is proposing to cancel contracts provided by the Thrive Network, which was awarded £1.8 million last year.

Thrive brings together eleven charities all providing early intervention support across the city, consisting of SAMH, Health in Mind, VOCAL, Cyrenians, CAPS, Change Mental Health, Edinburgh Leisure, Penumbra, Edinburgh and Lothians Greenspace Trust, Wheatley Care and Media Education.

Volunteer Edinburgh is also among those set to lose out, with its Voluntary Work as Therapy project facing the axe.

Charity leaders have hit back at the proposed cuts as “short-sighted” warning it will put live at risk, force services to close and lead to care workers being made redundant at a time when demand for mental health services is growing.

A public meeting against the proposals is planned for 26 May and a petition against the cuts will be launched later in the week.

Plans to save £2.2m within the current financial year were put forward by EIJB officers to Thrive in April - despite contracts being in place until November.

It’s part of a wider raft of proposals as the EIJB board seeks to make dramatic cuts totalling £28.6 million. Social care leaders in the Capital say the board must make difficult decisions to ensure it can meet the statutory needs of those “most in need.”

‘The focus must be on saving lives’

The Stafford Centre drop-in community resource in Broughton Street faces closure if the cuts are approved. Jim Hume, director of policy, public affairs and communications at Change Mental Health, which runs the centre, says: “Community services will be dismantled if this goes ahead. I’m deeply concerned for the people we support. We help people who often don’t fit the criteria for NHS help.

“Our centre helps more than 600 people and keeps them out of hospital. Cutting these services will mean thousands will be abandoned.

“We are calling on the board to work with us, so help is not taken away for people in serious need. The focus must be on saving lives.”

Change Mental Health CEO Nick Ward describes the proposals as “callous”. He says: “The fact that Thrive is so callously being recommended for disinvestment is a travesty. We believe the service is fit for purpose and delivering the results that are needed, early intervention and prevention works, it has been demonstrated multiple times.

“We call on the Edinburgh Integrated Joint Board to shelve these damaging and self-defeating proposals and work with the third sector to design the next phase of the Thrive Collective, so we can support even more people, earlier and in the community, resulting in more money being saved and better outcomes for Edinburgh’s population.”

Delay may make cuts worse

The draft Medium Term Financial Plan put forward in March stated that the EIJB needs to plug gap of £2.2m under the banner of “recovery and rationalisation”.

Charities pushed back on proposals in April and the decision was delayed to the next board meeting in June.