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.

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.