Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what role his Department has in ensuring there is adequate mental health training for staff across all NHS trusts.

NHS England and NHS Improvement are supporting line managers, supervisors and teams to have psychologically informed conversations. They are also offering peer support training as well as a range of resources to help teams decompress and process their experiences. When National Health Service staff require additional professional support, they will be offered evidence-based treatment by trained and qualified mental health practitioners.

Additional psychological support has also been made available for all NHS staff during and after COVID-19 response and can be accessed online at the following link:

people.nhs.uk/help

NHS staff, frontline workers, and volunteers can now access a new psychological first aid training course developed by Public Health England and launched on 15 June 2020. There has been significant interest in the course; 8,700 learners have enrolled as of 17 June.