Access to high quality mental health services could be put at
risk if the experiences of clinical support staff working in
these services continue to be overlooked.
New research from the Nuffield Trust reveals significant
differences between the experiences of over 41,000 frontline
staff supporting mental health services, especially around
flexible working, bullying, discrimination and career
progression, in comparison to the wider NHS workforce. Clinical
support staff make up more than a third of all NHS clinical staff
working in mental health services. Therefore, this group will
play a key role in helping to meet the increase in demand for
mental health services due to the pandemic.
Untapped? Understanding the mental health clinical support
workforce is the most comprehensive analysis to date of this
underexplored and often overlooked group. It looks at electronic
staff records, a bespoke data analysis of the 2019 NHS staff
survey, freedom of information requests around recruitment and a
review of job adverts.
Key findings include:
- While some career progression pathways are accessible through
apprenticeship routes, such as health care assistants progressing
to nursing associates and then to registered nurses, only 1% of
mental health support workers who are employed in the NHS for a
year moved into trainee nursing associate roles.
- Mental health support staff experience higher rates of
physical violence (37%) from patients, their relatives or members
of the public than across all staff working in mental health
(17%) or clinical support staff working in other services (29%).
- There is more than twice the level of black and black British
representation in mental health support roles than the NHS
workforce as a whole (14% vs 6%) and higher rates of
discrimination based on ethnic background compared to all staff
working in mental health services (48% vs 43%).
- Opportunities for flexible working are limited, with over
half of job adverts reviewed requiring flexibility from employees
rather than offering flexible working patterns. Mental health
support workers are less likely to be satisfied with
opportunities for flexible working compared to all mental health
staff (56% vs 62%).
- There is a marked, unexplained variation in the experience,
knowledge, qualifications, skills and values that NHS
organisations seek when employing mental health clinical support
staff.
Following the fieldwork for this report, the Government announced
a further £500 million to support mental health services in their
recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Report co-author and Nuffield Trust Senior Fellow Dr Billy Palmer
said:
“There has been a long-standing failure to address unmet mental
health need in the NHS, and due to Covid-19, demand for mental
health services has only increased.”
“Despite government commitments to expand high-quality mental
health services to an extra 2 million people in the next two
years, we find that the mental health support workforce, who are
at the forefront of delivering patient care, are often left
unsupported, not afforded flexible working and face increased
discrimination.”
“Failure to attract people to these vital roles in mental health
services could mean people waiting longer for treatment, and
impact on care quality and other NHS services.”
Ends.
Notes to editors:
About the report:
- The clinical support workforce in this report belong to three
categories: health care assistants and those in similar
positions, those in ‘professional roles’ that require some
further or advanced education such as nursing associates, and
training posts such as trainee psychological wellbeing
practitioners.
- We report staff experiences using the 2019 Staff Survey as
the available data from the 2020 survey used a different
categorisation for staff groups.
- The government’s plans to invest in mental health recovery
was announced on the 27th March 2021 here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/mental-health-recovery-plan-backed-by-500-million
- This work is an independent review and part of a wider
project by the National Workforce Skills Development Unit
(NWSDU). The NWSDU is creating a central resource for those
responsible for workforce planning to assist the mental health
support workforce. Visit the NWSDU website for more information.
- With a view to improve working conditions and retention in
the workforce, the report also includes a number of other
recommendations. The recommendations focus on, for example,
investment in training, flexible working and support for career
development.
