CHARM’s has responded to Health and Social Care Committee Commons Select Committee Community Mental Health Services Inquiry. This followed a request for submissions made just before Christmas. At short notice CHARN supporters met and put together our own response that you can see here:

CHARM RESPONSE FOR SELECT COMMITTEE

The Committee is undertaking an inquiry into community mental health services. The inquiry will examine what good looks like from the perspective of service users and their families/carers. The Committee would like the inquiry to shine a light on case studies of innovative practice and high-quality care across the country, and to undertake meaningful and impactful engagement with people accessing these services.

The inquiry will consider how service users’ wider health and social needs can be addressed, including in employment and housing, and to understand what policy interventions are required to improve how these needs are met. As part of this inquiry, the Committee also wants to assess to what extent the Community Mental Health Framework is driving improvements in the delivery of more integrated, person-centred care.

This inquiry is focussing on adults with severe mental health needs in particular, which includes but is not limited to people with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and severe depression. The Committee recognises the scale of the challenge in children and young people’s mental health, and plans to do further work in this area in due course, building on its predecessor Committee’s 2021 inquiry.

This is the introduction to our response

Communities for Holistic, Accessible, Rights-based Mental Health (CHARM) is a Manchester-based campaign advocating for transformative changes in Manchester’s psychiatric services. Our mission emphasises human rights and community empowerment. CHARM is advocating for a comprehensive redesign of mental health services.

Our proposals emphasise a shift from traditional biomedical models to approaches that prioritize social determinants, human rights, anti-racism, and community involvement. Our focus is on creating a more integrated, person-centred, and rights-based approach to mental health care. Mental Health services should be organised around three core principles: “Nothing about us without us”, “Freedom is therapeutic” and “Founded on social justice”

Campaigning for Radical Changes: Services in Manchester have been in crisis since at least 2017. The City of Manchester has amongst the highest level of need in England with one of the lowest levels of funding. We believe this has resulted from a combination of decision making that has prioritised primary care over those with severe mental illness, a lack of resources and a failure to acknowledge the level of crisis and to be transparent with the public and service users . To campaign for change, CHARM collaborates with individuals with lived experience, family groups, trade unions and citizens. Our campaigns are rooted in human rights and aim to shift towards social and relationship-based support, moving away from solely biomedical models.

CHARM strives to foster the development of a mental health care system in Manchester that is compassionate, community-oriented, and firmly grounded in human rights.