Asked by: Chris Heaton-Harris (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department has plans to change the workforce requirements for learning disability nurses.
Answered by Ben Gummer
Health Education England (HEE) was established to deliver a better healthcare workforce for England and using all available data is accountable for ensuring that we have a National Health Service workforce in the right numbers, with the right skills, values and behaviours to respond to the current and future needs of patients.
HEE has been working with Skills for Care, Skills for Health and national transforming care partners to deliver a comprehensive workforce strategy to transform services for people with a learning disability, autism and/or behaviour that challenges to make significant and lasting improvements to their care and lives.
HEE has developed and made available a number of enabling tools and resources that can be utilised throughout Transforming Care Partnership including:
― a Learning Disability Skills and Competency Framework which adopts a competency based approach to workforce planning and development;
― a series of role templates to support the development of community and enhanced community teams; and
― HEE Learning Disability Expert Reference Group Chaired by Baroness Hollins is exploring the career framework opportunities within health and social care for the development of new roles and education and training pathway.
Asked by: Chris Heaton-Harris (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many student training places there were in England for learning disability nursing in each of the last five years.
Answered by Ben Gummer
The following table shows the number of pre-registration learning disability nurse places that were available for each year since 2012/13.
Learning disability nursing | 2012/13 | 2013/14 | 2014/15 | 2015/16 | 2016/17 |
Planned | 612 | 628 | 653 | 664 | 638 |
Source: multi professional education and training budget monitoring returns
Asked by: Chris Heaton-Harris (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to encourage students to train as learning disability nurses.
Answered by Ben Gummer
In January 2016 the Health Education England Learning Disability Programme supported Health Careers in a two-week Learning Disability Nursing promotion with a significant increase in web page and twitter activity.
In February 2016 a learning disability leadership signposting page was launched and the campaign #inspiringleadersinLD will feature a series of short video clips of inspiring learning disability nurses in a variety of roles. It is anticipated this campaign will raise profile of a career in learning disability nursing amongst the current learning disability workforce.
Asked by: Chris Heaton-Harris (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it his policy that there should be a learning disability liaison nurse in every acute hospital in England.
Answered by Ben Gummer
Staffing levels are the responsibility of National Health Service organisations, which must make sure the number of staff and skill mix of the workforce, reflects patient care needs and local requirements. It is therefore up to NHS trusts to make decisions about employing learning disability nurses.
The Strengthening the Commitment: The report of the UK Modernising Learning Disability Nursing Review (2012) centred on strengthening the capacity, capability, quality and leadership of the learning disabilities nursing profession to ensure that people with learning disabilities have access to the expert nursing care they need. The Department has set up a Strengthening the Commitment Implementation Group in England to take forward the recommendations including the employment of learning disability nurses within acute hospitals.