Developing our strategy - the national picture

Our organisational strategy has been developed to align with national policies and priorities. It has also been reviewed to reflect our initial learning from the COVID-19 pandemic.

We will continue to refresh our strategy to take into account emerging themes, evidence and insights resulting from the pandemic, and any other changes to the context we work within and the people we work to serve.

Increased investment in mental health

In early 2019, the NHS published its national NHS Long Term Plan setting out an ambitious future for the next ten years. It includes delivering a 21st century service model for the NHS, taking more action on prevention, and tackling the biggest health challenges of the population.

With a renewed focus on mental health, the NHS Long Term Plan outlined an ambition for significant transformation of mental health care. Nationally, a new ringfenced local investment fund worth at least £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24 has been created.

This is known as the Mental Health Investment Standard (MHIS). This will enable further service expansion and faster access to community and crisis mental health services for both adults and children and young people.

An accompanying implementation plan provides a framework to deliver the mental health commitments, including funding, transformation activities and expected expansion in workforce numbers, so that local partners and providers have clear targets to work towards.

The path to integration – a new system landscape

The NHS Long Term Plan described the need to better integrate care to meet the demands and needs of a changing population, confirming the move toward the implementation of Integrated Care Systems (ICS) nationally, building on, and further developing, the integration work started by Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs).

This new landscape is made up of:

• GP practices working together in networks – called Primary Care Networks (PCNs)
• Four new Integrated Care Partnerships (ICPs) across Kent and Medway, drawing together all the NHS organisations in a given area and working more closely with health improvement services and social care
• A single clinical commissioning group for Kent and Medway, led by local doctors, to take a bird’s eye view of health priorities for local people and look at where we can tackle shared challenges together, including mental health.

As lead partner in the mental health provider collaborative, KMPT has an integral role to play in this new landscape.

We will help to embed and deliver the triple integration of primary and specialist care, physical and mental health services, and health with social care.

"To help deliver the NHS Long Term Plan, £51m of additional funding for mental health will be invested into the Kent and Medway system over the next five years.