Mental Health Services: Staff

(asked on 18th December 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has had recent discussions with local mental health trusts on the adequacy of their staffing levels.


Answered by
Maria Caulfield Portrait
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
This question was answered on 7th February 2024

There have been no such specific discussions recently although it is possible that staffing levels may have been discussed with representatives of mental health trusts as part of wider discussions.

Our aim is to grow the mental health workforce by an additional 27,000 staff by March 2024 and we have delivered over half of this by June 2023, with further significant growth expected this year, alongside the continued growth of mental health roles in primary care and the independent sector.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan builds on existing national plans to meet the forecast growth in demand for the overall mental health and learning disability workforce of 4.4 per cent per year up to 2036/37 to improve access to services and quality of care.

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