Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help increase the number of people working in community rehabilitation services.

NHS England published the Intermediate Care Framework and Rehabilitation and reablement model in September 2023. The Framework sets out actions systems can take to increase intermediate care rehabilitation and reablement capacity, including through optimising the use of the registered therapy workforce and maximising the use of skilled support workers. The framework is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/intermediate-care-framework-for-rehabilitation-reablement-and-recovery-following-hospital-discharge/

The Intermediate Care Frontrunner sites, and pilot work with seven local geographies has worked to define the workforce required to meet the demand for bedded and non-bedded intermediate care rehabilitation and reablement. NHS England is planning further work in 2024/2025 to progress the implementation and learning from the workforce pilots and to support systems nationally to progress workforce planning processes and estimate the workforce required to meet the demand.

Better Care Fund capacity and demand plans will inform alignment and reporting of progress to increase workforce capacity across health and care including rehabilitation and reablement workforce capacity.

The NHS Long term workforce plan commits to supporting Integrated Care Systems to develop local strategies that would support local quality apprenticeship programmes targeted at specific occupational shortages and skills gaps and transformation across a number of settings including community care. The NHS long term workforce plan is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/nhs-long-term-workforce-plan/