NHS: Nurses

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The bursary will be available for new and continuing nursing, midwifery and allied health students for courses from September 2020. As I said, students will be able to access both student loan funding and this additional, non-repayable funding from the Department of Health and Social Care while studying. This means that students will have more cash in their pockets than they ever have before, which should attract them. It also means that we will be able to target funding to areas and specialisms that struggle to recruit, which we believe will definitely improve the sustainability of the nursing workforce and reduce its variability up and down the country.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the National Mental Capacity Forum. Do the Government recognise that we need to do more than just put more money into nursing for learning difficulties, given that there are now 1,000 fewer such nurses than there were four years ago and given that the mortality and morbidity rate in the population of people with learning difficulties is alarming, in that their life expectancy can be around 10 years shorter than that of the rest of the population? This area needs to be targeted. Given the stresses involved in this type of nursing, it takes more than money to retain people.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

As ever, the noble Baroness raises a serious issue. We have introduced a targeted initiative for students who commence loan-funded postgraduate preregistration nursing courses particularly for those going on to work in learning disability, mental health and district nursing—to give them a golden hello, as it were. We have also introduced more clinical placements, where students can gain specific professional knowledge and be attracted into those very specialised and important areas of expertise.