Heath shares this latest news on behalf of Aspire Ryde. OnTheWight has contacted the CCG for their response. Ed
Aspire Ryde are deeply saddened to announce the forced closure of a number of its anxiety, mental health and welfare services as at the end of August. This is directly due to promised funding from the Isle of Wight clinical commissioning group being withdrawn without notice and after costs had been committed.
Wellbeing services
Aspire Ryde have been delighted to offer simple solutions for peer support, diversionary meaningful occupation and more specialist sessions focusing on wellbeing rather than illness. These include: a community choir, wood work sessions, cycle maintenance, gardening, arts and groups that encourage talking to combat anxiety, depression and reduce isolation.
These groups give people a place to belong, a place to share thoughts and self care strategies and are a place where people feel we care and we are regularly told Aspire is a safe place.
“Crumbling public sector mental health services”
The growing demand for these services is due to crumbling public sector mental health services on the Isle of Wight that are deemed inadequate and require significant improvement according to Care Quality Commission reports.
Users have flocked to Aspire because of its can-do attitude to listen to the community and try to tackle community problems.
Users discharged from Severnacres directed to Aspire Ryde
Many service users show a significant improvement in their situation and avoid entering high cost mental health care, others are directly referred by the community mental health team and are regularly discharged from Severnacres and told go to Aspire Ryde.
Aspire Ryde had been told for some years that funding was to be made available soon. It has even been shown off and commended as a great model by senior public sector managers.
Monaghan: Agreement drafted and agreed months ago
Heath Monaghan Founder of Aspire Ryde said:
“In the spring Aspire had detailed discussions with CCG commissioners who promised that a sum of funding would be made immediately available to avoid the need for a few sessions to close and that new additional funding would be made available in the autumn.
“An agreement was drafted, agreed upon and signed by myself months ago. We continued to deliver our services on that basis & incurred costs in doing so.
“However after chasing our invoice for payment the CCG told us, without any consultation or discussion, that its funding priorities were changing and it would not honour the funding agreement. It also disclosed that the future funding rounds promised from October onwards for community mental health were also being scrapped.
“The future for community-led mental health for Isle of Wight residents looks bleak and this is shocking for Island residents.”
CCG’s decision “seems to go directly against CQC guidance”
A report by the care quality commission stated that “Public services must ‘wake up’ to gaps in mental health care.
However the CCG’s decision seems to go directly against this guidance and leaves huge gaps in mental health services that are just not being addressed.
Fire fighting to serve the most poorly
The existing few services are fire fighting to serve the most poorly and not focusing on prevention for the thousands of people that are in desperate need of support on the Island today.
Ironically the funding withdrawn from Aspire Ryde that could have prevented so much escalation will only pay for one inpatient mental health bed for three weeks. In the end the CCG are likely to incur a considerably greater cost in this kind of care because of this decision.
IW mental health services in crisis
The continued approach by the CCG in providing mainly high cost acute mental health services and the failure to embrace low cost effective services that can avoid escalation into high cost care needs to be tackled.
Mental health services on the Isle of Wight are in crisis, Island residents deserve better. Living on such a beautiful Island surrounded by blue sea space and covered in lush green spaces we should have one of the lowest rates of suicides and low poor mental health – but we have quite the opposite!
Very reluctantly closing down services
Aspire Ryde recognise the need for such services and are very reluctantly closing down services that would have a significant financial impact if not addressed, failed promises from CCG could have had awful financial impacts upon our whole organisation.
We will continue to do what we can, seeking other forms of financial support from other grants, perhaps company sponsorships for specific much needed sessions to reopen in due course.
CCG response
In response to the release by Aspire, James Seward, Locality Director at the CCG said,
“Our Mental Health Blueprint, developed with service users and providers, sets out a significant transformation programme for mental health services on the island.
“Our focus is to ensure that the most appropriate care is provided in the right place and at the right time and the wider community and the voluntary sector will continue to play a vital role in this transformation work.
“We acknowledge all that Aspire Ryde has been doing to help people with mental health support needs and we appreciate the work they do.
“We had discussed the opportunity for Aspire, together with other voluntary organisations that work with those who have mental health support needs, to bid for small grants funds from a ‘one-off’ pot of money.
“We have needed to pause these discussions so we can fully consider all possible support options to ensure we provide the best possible mental health.”
Article edit
13.10 CCG response added
