Sheffield Green Councillors were successful in a vote calling on the Labour Government to increase funding for mental health services to give them parity with physical health services.
Broomhill and Sharrow Vale Cllr Angela Argenzio and Chair of the Adult Health and Social Care Committee said,
“As the Sheffield City Council representative on the South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board I have raised the issue of staff mental health of employees of the NHS & how this affects the general public and especially people who are already waiting for a long time to get treatment. But until we have parity between physical & mental health resourcing we cannot say that there’s parity of esteem.
“The latest statistic I have had says that 92% of resources are for physical health, only 8% for mental health. (1) I would be very interested to see how colleagues in the Labour group intend to challenge the new Government on this issue or if they just go along with whatever narrative the Government will spin to excuse their lack of political will to do the right thing”
City Ward Cllr Martin Phipps said
“ For many people work takes up a large portion of their lives, which is why it’s so important that mental health and wellbeing is valued properly in work.
“As we know, local government level finances are unsustainable, and this comes with its own stresses and pressures on local government employees. This is why in our amendment we called for sustainable funding for local government.
“One of the biggest issues with mental health support is the lack of accessibility to NHS services. I looked at the CAMHS (Child, Adolescent Mental Health Services) waiting times and here in Sheffield Community CAMHS has an expected wait time of 130 weeks to get a first appointment. While that’s particularly bad, long waiting times for mental health support is a nationwide story.
“One of the areas the Labour motion falls short is that it misses that the Parliamentary Labour Party now have the ability to make mental health financially equally valued to physical health – which is why we’ve added calls to government to make parity of funding a reality.
“ This is really critical and underlies many of the conversations we’ve had around mental health and waiting times in health committees over years.”
Labour voted against the sections of the Green amendment to write to the government to request parity of funding
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