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 increase the provision of healthcare workers in Solihull constituency.

Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care System’s (ICS) ‘I Can’ programme provides local unemployed people with an opportunity to access health and social care careers, with training and support provided. In the eight months since the launch of the programme, approximately 200 unemployed people have been placed in National Health Service jobs. The ICS also submitted a bid to support international nursing in November 2021 and 347 international nurses have since been recruited to local trusts.

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust’s trainee nursing associate programme currently has 380 trainees, with a further 140 commencing in October 2022. The Trust has more than 150 qualified nursing associates, with more qualifying in November 2022. Birmingham and Solihull are participating in a national programme to improve staff retention by using data to identify high risk areas and proposing programmes, such as vacancy rates, sickness rates, reasons for absence and staff survey responses.