Nursing and Midwifery: Student Applications

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Lord O'Shaughnessy

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for bringing up that issue. I have not seen the report, but I shall certainly look at it. It is true that, across the public sector, there is an issue with an ageing workforce. To some extent, that will be addressed by the fact that we will all be working until we are older. The Government will also be introducing increases to the number of training places, which was a critical reason for moving from a bursary to a fee-based system. The bursary system involved a cap; we are now able to release that cap and bring more numbers through in the training.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, as a very old retired nurse, can I ask my noble friend what the Government are doing to encourage an alternative route into nursing like the back to nursing course, which I took when my children were old enough to allow me to go back to work?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I thank my noble friend for that question. There are a couple of new opportunities: one is nursing associates and the other, in common with changes across the public sector, is that there are up to 1,000 new nursing degree apprenticeships providing alternative routes into nursing for those who do not want to go down the university route.

Mental Health: Children’s Services

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Lord O'Shaughnessy

Thursday 19th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I could not agree more with the noble Lord. It is significant that the Prime Minister made the announcement on mental health and committed herself to a big improvement in both the amount of funding and the services offered. Part of that is making sure that schools and health work together, with every secondary school in the country being offered mental health and first-aid training, but clearly there is much more to do.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, clearly prevention is better than cure. What is being done by the Department for Education and the Department of Health to work together to educate teachers—in fact all those who come into contact with people in our schools and universities—to notice when a young person might be having a mental health episode?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

The sad fact is that the prevalence of mental illness among young people, whether it is self-harm or eating disorders, is growing and there is a real problem. Schools have to play a central role along with health services in addressing it. One of the Prime Minister’s announcements was a major thematic review of children and adolescent mental health services, which is being carried out by both the Care Quality Commission and Ofsted, so that is an important point about joint working. Indeed, the Green Paper that we are committed to producing will be put together by both the Department of Health and the Department for Education. That is a very important statement of intent. Clearly there is a lot of work to do to fill it with good content that will make a difference, but there is absolute determination from the PM downwards to make that happen.