Mental Health residential is the largest area of spend representing circa 60% of the MH Accommodation Spend.
In line with ECC’s commissioning intentions to only make placements into residential care for the most complex service users and to increase the use of supported living the trend for residential care shows a reduction in the number of placements over several years.
The market is made up of a small number of specialist mental health homes looking after most service users and approx. 30% of placements being made into OP or AWD settings because of their age or specific conditions.
There is sufficient market capacity and providers are holding a level of voids. However, capacity is mainly concentrated in the north of Essex and our data indicates a possible gap in provision in the south and west quadrants who place a large number of service users in other areas.
A third of placements are currently out of county with a high number of these being within the unitary authorities of Southend and Thurrock.