2014/15 pan-London planned commissioning position: increase commissions to 137

1. IAPT 2014/15 pan-London planned commissioning position: increase commissions to 137 Planning for this profession is led by Health Education North Central and East London for the whole of London. This profession has an increase of 24.5% in commissioning volumes for year 2014/15(from 110); the increase is entirely in Low Intensity training in line with the HEE Mandate. Pan-London IAPT commissions • Context • The IAPT programme recognises the very high demand in primary care for psychological therapies; a lack of availability of qualified psychological therapists; and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)guidance on the efficacy of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which is the main clinical intervention offered through IAPT services. • IAPT services are based on a stepped care model with different levels of care to reflect the nature and severity of the difficulties experienced. • Higher levels offering more intensive therapy by High Intensity Therapists (HITS) • Lower levels offering less intensive therapy by Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners/Low Intensity Workers (PWPs or LIs) Existing and raised issues There are challenges with IAPT workforce data; the occupational codes are not sufficiently detailed to give robust data which is not therefore reliable. The ESR category for IAPT is S1M, which includes Clinical Psychologists and other Mental Health workers. As a result, extrapolating a finite IAPT workforce has not been possible. A national taskforce is working to address the issue of ESR coding; however, ESR is currently not a reliable source of data for this profession. As a result, for 2013/14, a consultation was undertaken with a pan-London IAPT sub group, which undertook a data trawl across London IAPT providers. The quality of the data was not uniform and not all providers responded. The increased commissions for 2014/15 reflects the HEE national target of 6000 additional practitioners by 2015. HEE anticipate that the target will be exceeded and that the focus for service providers should be on retention thereafter. Rationale for decision Recent stakeholder discussions have taken place where the leads for this group took the view to decrease salary support from the current 100% for Low Intensity IAPT with the resource released invested in additional Low Intensity training places. They agreed thatit would be more productive to have Low Intensity trainees funded at a lower percentage salary support. The commissioning numbers were agreed at 81 for Low Intensity and 56 for High Intensity for 2014/15.