Liverpool charity fear lives could be put at risk over funding cuts

A Liverpool charity that supports young people with mental health issues say they fear lives could be at risk after their funding was reduced by almost half

YPAS - Young Person's Advisory Service - has been helping young people and their families for the past 50 years

In 2016 they reached over 2000 children and 400 families, as well as carrying out over 6000 therapy sessions

Now because of funding cuts to Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group - who fund the voluntary and community sector in the city - the charity has now seen it's budget cut by 43% for this upcoming year. Monique Collier, Chief Executive at Young Person’s Advisory Service (YPAS) said: “In light of the Governments very welcomed commitment to improving mental health services for children and young people, including access and waiting times, this funding reduction to YPAS’s forward thinking delivery strategy is extremely troubling and short-sighted.

A review of the Five Year Forward View identified that spending on mental health services would continue to be a priority. Unfortunately this funding reduction we are faced with does not reflect that."

"The demand for YPAS’s services continues to grow. However, alone we have significantly less capacity to support this."

"I do not expect this level of funding reduction to impact on the delivery offer of Liverpool’s CAMHS services going forward."

"We appreciate that this is going to be a challenging time for children, young people and families, our cross sector referring organisations and for the city as a whole"

A Liverpool CCG spokesperson said:

"NHS budgets are under increasing pressure both locally and nationally, with demand for health services continuing to grow.

NHS Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group needs to make significant savings to its budget over the next two years, which unfortunately means that we cannot continue to fund all of the services we have in the past.

Around 90% of our budget has to be spent on the provision of core NHS services, including GP services, hospitals, community health and mental health, so we have to find savings in other areas.

After a review of other spending, we have made the very difficult decision not to renew or to reduce funding for a number of different services provided by voluntary and community organisations, which includes YPAS.

These decisions have not been taken lightly - we fully recognise the valuable role that the voluntary and community sector, including YPAS, plays in supporting the health and wellbeing of local young people.