Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to include projections of the numbers of mental health staff that will be recruited to support people with Parkinson’s in the NHS workforce plan.
To support the workforce as a whole, we have commissioned NHS England to develop a Long Term Workforce Plan, which will include independently verified forecasts for the number of healthcare professionals required in future years. The Plan is for the whole of the National Health Service workforce, including mental health, however, it will not provide detailed workforce assessments for individual services or staff groups.
The NHS mental health workforce has grown. Latest data shows that, as of December 2022, there has been an increase of over 8,900, 6.9%, full-time equivalent staff compared to December 2021. This includes only those people who work directly on mental health, across NHS trusts and integrated care boards in England.