Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase the number of mental health practitioners working in the NHS.

We have a number of national programmes in place focused on improving mental health staff retention, return to practice, overseas and domestic recruitment and improving sickness absence. These include:

- providing funding for the fast track mental health social work programme that is delivering around 100 social workers into mental health services each year and supporting the development of social work as a profession in mental health services;

- increasing the nursing workforce by expanding the number of nurse training places and launching the ‘We are the NHS’ campaign to highlight nursing opportunities in mental health to increase interest in this profession; and

- increasing the number of psychiatry placements available for junior doctors undertaking foundation training.