Plan aims to tackle a 'burning injustice'

Developed by Health Education England (HEE), NHS Improvement, NHS England, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and other key mental health experts, Stepping forward to 2020/21: The mental health workforce plan for England, sets out measures to tackle the ‘historic imbalance in workforce capacity’, and ‘fulfil ambitions to improve mental health services’. The Department of Health said the plan ‘showed how the health service will dramatically increase the number of trained nurses, therapists, psychiatrists, peer support workers, and other mental health professionals, to deliver on this commitment and tackle the burning injustice of mental illness and inadequate treatment’.

The plan concludes there should be:

• 2,000 additional CAMHS nurse, consultant, and therapist posts.
• 2,900 additional therapists and other allied health professionals supporting expanded access to adult talking therapies.
• 4,800 additional posts for nurses and therapists working in crisis care settings.
• ‘Significant increases’ in perinatal mental health support, liaison and diversion teams, and early intervention teams working with people at risk of psychosis.

Measures set out include:

• Improvements in how employers retain existing mental health staff, alongside a national retention programme and initiatives to improve career pathways.
• A major HEE-led ‘Return to Practice’ campaign to encourage some of the 4,000 psychiatrists and 30,000 trained mental health nurses not substantively employed by the NHS to return to the profession.
• A new action plan to attract more clinicians to work in mental health services/psychiatry.
• The development and expansion of new professional roles ‘to help create more flexible teams and boost capacity’.
• Co-ordinated action to tackle ‘the high attrition rates’ among psychiatry trainees.

The plan also pledges action to improve the mental health and resilience of its own workforce.