Mental Health Services

(asked on 10th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate he has made of the change in the number of mental health support workers who provide one-to-one support to those with a mental health diagnosis; and whether he has plans to increase the number of those workers providing that support.


Answered by
Nadine Dorries Portrait
Nadine Dorries
This question was answered on 18th November 2020

We remain committed to growing the mental health workforce to achieve the ambitions set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.

NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) workforce statistics. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), but not staff working in primary care, local authorities or other providers.

There is no data available which identifies staff who provide one-to-one support. The following table shows the total number of full time equivalent (FTE) staff with a mental health occupation code who provide support to clinical staff in the trusts and CCGs as at September each year since 2017 along with the latest figure, June 2020.

HCHS mental health support to clinical staff, FTE

September 2017

2,394

September 2018

2,516

September 2019

2,871

June 2020

3,256

Source: NHS Digital, NHS HCHS workforce statistics – HCHS staff in National Health Service trusts and CCGs June 2020. Mental health workforce, FTE.

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