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Mental health must not follow on policy coat tails The Department of Health should encourage mental health trusts to make early applications for foundation status and not leave them 'to follow on the coat tails'of the rest of the NHS, the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health has warned.

In a briefing paper on the government's controversial policy, the centre says that development funds already earmarked for acute and specialist trusts should be extended to mental health providers.

But it also highlights risks - particularly the fear that mental health trusts have now grown so large they have become 'daunting to primary care trust commissioners'.

Foundation trusts would 'exacerbate that trend', the report claims, resulting in trusts acting independently rather than in collaboration with commissioners and other stakeholders.