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Voluntary sector mental health providers are to set up their own “trade body” to push for a wider role in the delivery of services, Community Care has learned, writes Simeon Brody.

The Mental Health Providers Forum is expected to launch in the autumn with a primary brief to remove barriers preventing NHS services being commissioned from the voluntary sector.

Set up as an informal group of 13 large providers including Mind, Rethink and Turning Point two years ago, the group now wants to open itself up to a wider membership and it will begin to recruit staff and take on limited company status over the summer.

One of its chief tasks will be to tackle the perception that the voluntary sector can only provide social and not health care.

“Its main focus is to improve the interface with NHS purchasers and raise the issue of whether provision always needs to be provided from within the NHS. The goal of the group is clearly to expand the role of the voluntary sector in providing health services,” said Mind chief executive Richard Brook.

He argued that apart from compulsory treatment, the vast majority of mental health services could be opened up to the voluntary sector.

Brook said the forum had already completed work on developing the clinical governance and quality frameworks voluntary sector agencies would need to deliver health services.

Rethink chief executive Cliff Prior said he would not want the forum to simply help the sector bid for existing services but tackle how it might play a part within a changing service model, involving more non-hospital crisis settings and early intervention work.

He said Rethink wanted: “a reconfiguring of services so voluntary sector providers can bring in what they are good at”.