NORTH Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner has pledged her support to find funding to ensure a mental health scheme in Scarborough can continue.
Following a report from the Scarborough and Ryedale Clinical Commissioning Group, which calls for a potential halt to funding the Street Triage pilot, Julia Mulligan has called for them to reconsider.
Under the pilot, police officers and mental health professionals patrol the streets together – and the scheme has been hailed a success.
Early indications suggest it has prevented 1,000 vulnerable people from being sent to Scarborough’s A&E Department, which is already under strain and had to declare a major incident just earlier this year.
North Yorkshire was the last policing area without a health-based Place of Safety which previously meant that people detained under the Mental Health Act were kept in police custody rather than a hospital setting.
There are now three Places of Safety, including one in Scarborough, and a fourth on the way.
Julia Mulligan has raised the issue by writing to Norman Lamb MP, the minister responsible for mental health and policing.
She is attending a meeting on Monday to question the decision by local GPs.
She said: “Street Triage has been successful by anyone’s standard, and to consider pulling the funding is frankly nonsensical.
“Health services in North Yorkshire have a history of being behind the curve in providing the right mental healthcare, and this is another example.I will be making my views known and will do everything I can to ensure funding is in place to continue with the Street Triage scheme in Scarborough.”
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