Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support families who travel long distances for NHS‑commissioned inpatient mental health care.

We recognise that being sent to a hospital far away from home, family, and support networks means a poorer experience of care for patients and increased safety risks, which is why we are working to end this practice. We have invested £75 million of capital funding in 2025/26 to improve inpatient care and help stop mental health patients being sent far from home for treatment. A national quality improvement programme is in place across England to improve the culture of care in all mental health hospitals.

Through the 10-Year Health Plan we will move care closer to home by reducing ‘out of area placements’ for mental health patients by March 2027. The NHS England Capital Guidance for 2026/27 to 2029/30, published in November 2025, makes £473 million of capital funding available for systems and encourages them to establish community based mental health centres, alongside other capital priorities. These include eliminating inappropriate out of area placements.

Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects the right to a family life. All patients have the right to maintain contact with, and be visited by, anyone they wish to see, subject to carefully limited exceptions. The value of visits in maintaining links with family and community networks is recognised as a key element in a patient’s care, treatment, and recovery. Every effort should be made to assist patients to maintain contact with friends and family, including considering the need to travel for visits when the patient is placed out of area.

Where the patient is detained under the Mental Health Act, the Code of Practice sets out that commissioners should consider whether they can provide any assistance where there are difficulties visiting because of distance. Local authorities should also consider whether it would be appropriate to provide financial support to enable families to visit children and young people placed in hospital, taking into account their duties to promote contact between children and young people and their families. Such duties arise when children and young people are being looked after by local authorities as well as when they are accommodated in hospital for three months or more. Consideration of any transfer to another hospital must include whether the transfer would give the patient greater access to carers or have the opposite effect.