According to opposition politicians, the NHS Long Term Plan shows that NHS England is not on course to achieve a pledged increase in mental health workforce of 21,000 by 2021, which was announced by the the-then health secretary, Jeremy Hunt in July.
Instead it estimates that if number of mental health staff continues only at the current rate of growth, the NHS will miss its target by over 15,000.
Labour has also claimed that statistics from NHS Digital reveal the total number of mental health nurses has fallen in every month this year and the number of psychiatrists has increased only 3 per cent over 12 months.
“This Government’s failure to act on the mental health workforce crisis could threaten to turn the burning injustice of mental ill health that the Prime Minister pledged to tackle into a raging inferno,” said Shadow Mental Health Minister, Barbara Keeley.
“Mental Health’s share of the wider NHS budget will not increase over the next three years so services will continue to suffer as clinical staff leave in greater numbers, unless the NHS Long Term Plan addresses the current workforce shortfall.
“At the last election Labour pledged to increase investment in mental health and to ring-fence budgets so that crucial funding for mental health reaches the front line and isn’t siphoned off to plug gaps elsewhere in the NHS.”
Top of FormIn response, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Mental health is a key priority for the Government. We are transforming services with record amounts of funding, with the NHS spending almost £12bn on mental health in 2017/18.
“But we want to go further, which is why the Prime Minister has made parity between physical and mental health a priority for our long-term plan for the NHS supported by at least an additional £2 billion a year.”
In this episode of the Safety & Health Podcast, ‘Burnout, stress and being human’, Heather Beach is joined by Stacy Thomson to discuss burnout, perfectionism and how to deal with burnout as an individual, as management and as an organisation.
We provide an insight on how to tackle burnout and why mental health is such a taboo subject, particularly in the workplace.
