National Mental Health and Learning Disabilities & Autism Workforce

HEE is prioritising continued investment in training the future healthcare workforce to support the significant workforce growth required to deliver the ambitious transformation of Health services. Monitoring the progress towards achieving workforce expansion targets is critical to ensure that initiatives are delivering the required numbers, and that HEE are on track to deliver the target growth in workforce numbers across Mental Health and other key workforce areas within the Directorate of Education and quality (DEQ). Workforce data is essential to assessing the effectiveness of workforce expansion and transformation initiatives and the collection of the workforce data will support the delivery of the plans set out in the NHS Long Term Plan to improve Mental Health services. Annual data collections are a key part of implementing the targets in the NHS Long Term Plan which aims to significantly expand capacity and skill mix in mental health services. To achieve the required workforce growth robust workforce data is required by all stakeholders. It is particularly important to ensure that we have robust data to capture the non-NHS workforce contribution, which is not accessible through other data sets. A vast amount of MH and Learning disabilities and autism (LDA) services are provided by non-NHS organisations.

Monitoring the progress towards achieving the MH and LDA workforce expansion targets outlined in the NHS LTP is critical to ensure that initiatives are delivering the required numbers, and that HEE are on track to deliver the target growth in workforce numbers. Therefore, workforce data is essential to assessing the effectiveness of workforce expansion initiatives.

The HEE National Mental Health Programme have collected national workforce data for the Children and Young Peoples Mental (CYP MH) Health workforce and the NHS Talking Therapies workforce since 2016. The workforce data collections have proven to be extremely successful in relation to providing an overview of the workforce in place across the service providers (NHS and non-NHS) at a point in time. Previous workforce data collections have proven to be extremely successful in relation to providing an overview of the workforce, training, and education in place across service providers (NHS and non-NHS) at a point in time. They provide all stakeholders with a comprehensive breakdown of staff, the growth achieved to date, gaps in the workforce and training provision.

A need has been identified to establish a baseline for all social workers working in mental health services which will be used to build the national evidence base on the contribution of social workers to a complex and interconnected mental health and wider care system.

The case for direct award can be found on the following link: https://health-family-contract-search.secure.force.com/?SearchType=Projects

The closing date of this PIN midday on the Friday 10th March 2023.