Over half of mental health trusts cut crisis beds despite Government £1 billion funding pledge
By ITV News Health Editor Rachel Younger and Patrick Russell
Over half of mental health trusts in England have cut the number of beds for patients in crisis, despite the Government promising extra funding.
ITV News sent a freedom of information request to all of the country's 58 mental health trusts. Thirty-two of them responded.
We found that despite a Government pledge to invest an extra £1 billion into mental health services in England, 60% of Trusts have cut the number of beds available for mental health patients.
The figures offer little evidence of savings being put into community-based services designed to reduce the need for inpatient treatment. Instead they paint a picture of a desperately overstretched system struggling to meet demand.
When hospitals find themselves with no beds, they face a difficult choice of either paying private hospitals to take their patients or sending them hundreds of miles from home for an NHS bed.
We asked each trust how far patients have had to travel when there was no room for them locally and what was their bill for private care.
The response showed how a lack of capacity can have devastating effects for patients.
Barnet Mental Health Trust in North London, for example, cut 21 beds this year. But it spent £2m on private beds - £700,000 more than last year. And one patient was sent 233 miles from home for NHS treatment when no beds were available.
At Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, 13 beds were cut. The longest distance a patient had to travel for treatment there was 177 miles.
Remember, the Government has pledged that by 2021 no patient should ever face a long journey for mental health treatment.
And only 11 months ago former prime minister David Cameron promised almost £1 billion of funding over the next five years in what was billed as a "mental health revolution".
Nick Clegg, who pushed hard for mental health to be given parity with the treatment on offer for physical illness, told ITV News he believes promises are already being broken.
A spokesperson for NHS England said NHS investment in mental health services was "now rising faster than for other services".
But our figures show vulnerable patients are still having to travel hundreds of miles from their homes.
Cutting beds to put more money into community crisis teams may be a laudable aim.
But NHS England is under enormous pressure to pay off its burgeoning deficit.
Reducing capacity before you have invested in the community crisis teams needed means getting help right now is tougher than ever.