8 July 2025

This month’s launch of the 10 Year Health Plan for England sets out an ambitious and welcome vision for improving healthcare across the country. At its core are three major shifts designed to reshape how support is delivered:

• From hospital to community: with more care delivered closer to home
• From analogue to digital: harnessing new technology to streamline and empower individuals to manage their healthcare  as easily as banking or shopping online
• From sickness to prevention: focusing on earlier intervention and making healthy choices more accessible

In principle, much of this sounds promising. Our recently published London Mental Health Index revealed a concerning rise in poor mental health over the past 12 months, with over 4.2 million Londoners affected. The need for reform is clear and urgent.

At Hestia, we have called for high quality, accessible crisis care to be available in every community, alongside a preventative public health approach, creating spaces where adults can socialise and make connections, which is essential for wellbeing.

Every day, we see the power of community-based services in action. Take Raj* for example, who visited our crisis cafe after self-harming. He recently shared how the support he received had helped him to “feel better within myself and to find the strength to move forward.” Or Mina*, who experienced a frightening assault on the street leaving her feeling deeply traumatised: “Although this whole period in my life has been incredibly difficult to navigate, the Crisis Cafe was a constant source of support, and with their help I now feel so positive about my future.”

Hestia currently provides a range of mental health support services across London and the South East, including Recovery Houses, Registered Care Homes and eight crisis cafes – in close partnership with our NHS Commissioners.

Our crisis cafes are open during evenings and weekends – times when other services are often unavailable. No appointment or referral is needed. People visit for many reasons: some are in crisis, others are hoping to prevent one. Many are struggling with isolation or relationship breakdown. Others are facing housing issues, pressures at work or financial difficulties.

Each cafe provides a calm and supportive environment, where we can help people to reduce and cope with their immediate distress, talk things through, and begin to plan next steps. We work with service users  to develop personalised support plans and connect them with resources that build resilience. Encouragingly, 82% of those who attend leave feeling more hopeful about the future.  

We also continue to develop our relationship with mental health crisis assessment services (aka mental health A&Es).  These emergency services are vital, especially where clinical interventions are needed. But what they can’t provide is the longer-term, local connection and continuity that people often need to recover and stay well.

That’s where community steps in. The Health Plan’s emphasis on neighbourhood care is promising, but critical questions remain. How will Neighbourhood Health Centres be staffed and funded? Where will they be located, especially in cities like London where space is at a premium? How can providers like Hestia – from across public and charity sector – bring their years of experience to shape the right solutions?

To bring this vision to life, the NHS must work hand-in-hand with the UK’s Voluntary and Community Sector. Organisations like Hestia already play a vital role in delivering accessible, responsive, and preventative mental health support. With the right partnerships and investment, we can help to build systems that deliver real, lasting results, just as the 10 Year Health Plan envisions.

*Names have been changed to protect anonymity.

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