Response to the new NHS Long Term Workforce Plan

The plan’s main aims include:

• Increasing university places for medical and nursing students, including the first ever apprenticeship scheme for doctors.
• Medical school training places to increase to 15,000 by 2031.
• Increase the number of GP training places by 50% to 6,000 by 2031.
• Almost double the number of adult nurse training places by 2031, with 24,000 more nurse and midwife training places a year by 2031.

The UK Government has allocated £2.4 billion to fund these additional education and training places, on top of existing funding commitments.

Everyturn Mental Health CEO, Adam Crampsie, commented:

“We really welcome the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan; it’s long overdue and much needed. Increasing the NHS’s clinical workforce through a long-term training programme can begin to address the health and care staffing crisis. This will help to secure greater capacity within the NHS to support people with their mental and physical health.

“However, we’re keen to ensure that there is also an immediate response to supporting people who need to access services right now, by continuing to develop a new kind of health and care workforce.

We need to ensure that NHS mental health services continue to put people at the heart of their own care; by listening and supporting them to explore their ‘whole life’ needs, including the social issues that often lead to mental ill-health.

“At Everyturn Mental Health, we’re extremely proud of the non-clinical colleagues in our community mental health services, who bring their own lived experience of mental ill-health to the personalised approach to the whole-person care they offer. For this reason, we’re also calling for the NHS to develop and grow its crucial non-clinical workforce. By doing that, we’ll ensure everyone is able to access the support they need, when they need it most.”