Future in Mind cash must be ringfenced for CAMHS teams

There has been much political debate recently about the health of the NHS, and particularly its finances. Days after Theresa May launched a review of children's mental health services as part of her pitch to create a "shared society", the Prime Minister was drawn into defending the Conservatives' record on NHS spending. As the winter progresses, it is becoming clear that the extra £8bn pledged by David Cameron to meet NHS funding pressures up to 2020 is insufficient to keep pace with the demands placed on it by an aging population with greater treatment needs.

For children's mental health, the issue is more about ensuring the additional £1.4bn pledged in 2015 through the Future in Mind programme makes a difference to the quality of child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). The Future in Mind cash has been handed to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to decide how it is best spent locally. There is nothing wrong with that in theory, but evidence is emerging that commissioners have used the money to plug funding gaps in non-CAMHS provision - a recent YoungMinds' survey found nearly two-thirds of CCGs had spent some or all of the money on other services (see analysis).