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Written question asked by Baroness Berger (Labour) on Thursday, 25 October 2018, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 30 October 2018 (named day). It was answered by Matt Hancock (Conservative) on Tuesday, 30 October 2018 on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care.

Mental Health Services: Children and Young People

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 9 of the National Audit Office report Improving children and young people’s mental health services, what plans he is putting in place to monitor reliably workforce expansion in children and young people’s mental health services.

Answer

To track progress with implementation of the workforce plan, the Department has asked Health Education England (HEE) to develop a Mental Health Workforce Dashboard to monitor plans for the delivery of the workforce targets. This uses:

- Data from Strategic Transformation Partnership regional plans (to monitor staff expansion plans);

- NHS Digital data to track the size of the whole mental health workforce;

- Data from NHS Improvement on staff retention rates; and

- Data from HEE on the numbers of trainee staff currently studying and those undertaking specific courses for upskilling themselves to work in mental health.

For the longer term a project is underway, led by the Department, to improve the way in which NHS Digital data captures changes in workforce numbers. We are hoping that this will enable more accurate reporting of actual staff changes from early next financial year.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
183923
Session
2017-19
Subjects
Children Staff Mental health services Young people
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk