The vast majority of commissioners responsible for designing mental health services have never involved people with mental health needs in the design of the services, new data has revealed.

'Co-production' recommendations were set out over a year ago in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health. However, ‘Progress through Partnership’, a new report released today by Rethink Mental Illness, has revealed that the majority of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) do not have clear plans in place for involving people with lived experience of mental illness in shaping services.

196 out of 209 CCGs responded to Rethink's Freedom of Information requests.

  • Only 15% of CCGs who responded said they had used a co-production approach at least once in mental health commissioning.
  • Only 1% of CCGs explicitly stated an ambition for co-production in mental health that was aligned to the vision in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health: that co-production will be a standard approach to commissioning.
  • Only 14% of CCGs had plans to do more to involve people with experience of mental illness in their work.

Danielle Hamm, Associate Director at Rethink Mental Illness said: "If you want services to improve and work effectively, it makes absolute sense to get input from those people who use those services every day."

"We know CCGs mostly agree that this is the right way forward, so we now need to see clear plans about how this will happen."