Commitment 6 in Delivering for Mental Health (2006) states:
‘NHS QIS will develop the standards for ICPs for schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, depression, dementia and personality disorder by the end of 2007. NHS board areas will develop and implement ICPs and these will be accredited from 2008 onwards.’

NHS QIS has since established an accreditation system which is incremental and will support continuous quality improvement within mental health services. Assurance is required that NHS boards are moving forward with the development and implementation of mental health ICPs and that those ICPs are in line with the national standards. It will take some years for all NHS boards to achieve the final level of accreditation. In view of this, our aim is for the accreditation system to evolve over time.

The framework for the levels of accreditation will be fixed; however, the measures of success will take account of the changing national picture in mental health. The system will also be ‘work light’ for NHS boards and will link with and complement other national initiatives – for example alignment with the HEAT targets, the national mental health benchmarking project and, as far as possible, local government single outcome agreements. We are working closely with colleagues in the Mental Health Collaborative to ensure that our work is complementary and to minimise duplication of effort; we have also taken account of the key principles of external scrutiny as outlined in The Crerar Review (2007) namely, public focus, independence, proportionality, transparency and accountability.

Principles of foundation level accreditation

In the first instance, we will be asking NHS boards to evidence that they are at ‘foundation level’. Foundation level accreditation looks at the ‘building blocks’ for ICP development and implementation. In order to achieve this level, NHS boards must demonstrate that they have certain fundamental aspects of the ICP process standards in place. We will be focusing specifically on:

• Named leads
• Stakeholder involvement
• Process mapping
• Links to local care governance systems, and
• Information management

We issued guidance on this in mid-November 2008, with nominated accreditation co-ordinators identified in each NHS board. The guidance and subsequent ICP foundation level accreditation framework can be found here.

Please remember that your national ICP co-ordinator can also be contacted for information and additional guidance.

A target date of September 2009 for achievement of foundation level accreditation has been set by the Scottish Government.

Currently, plans are in place for April 2009 and August 2009 ICP accreditation panels.
 
Application deadline for the April 2009 panel will be 9 March 2009 - CLOSED.
Application deadline for the August 2009 panel will be 6 July 2009.

The final date for submission for foundation level accreditation from all NHS boards will be Monday 6 July 2009.