The Mental Health Workforce Project is a collaborative effort, with an objective of ensuring that current mental health services in England are offering sufficient support to those who need it. The project also intends to shape the future workforce, by liaising with relevant mental health authorities and industry leaders and professionals to ensure changing expectations are being met.
The project will act as an independent voice on mental health workforce issues in England, reacting to shifting demands and setting in place a structure for workforce professionals to follow for years to come. But what could the Mental Health Workforce Project mean for professionals currently working in mental health?
Changing work demands
The current legislative provision for mental health care and services is complex in nature, and is spread across a number of documents and institutions. In 2013, Health Education England became operational, with the stated role of improving education and training among the mental health workforce. Therefore, depending on the findings of the project, due to publish sometime in late 2016 or early 2017, mental health professionals could find their job roles and responsibilities altered. For example, the increase in young people being diagnosed with depression could mean a resultant increase in specialist psychologist jobs, with more professionals being trained to treat these kinds of cases.
Greater communication among the workforce
The Mental Health Workforce Project places great emphasis on collaboration between professionals and liaison with mental health care service providers to ensure there are no areas being neglected. If you are a mental health professional, you may have already been asked for your views on the future of mental health care in England (20,000 filled in a questionnaire on the subject); if not, you could find your opinion becoming increasingly valued in the coming years.
More support for mental health professionals
The Mental Health Workforce Project is just one of a number of encouraging recent developments for those working in mental health. The past five years of austerity, with cuts to local services and extreme staff shortages have hit this area of healthcare hard. Vacancies in psychologist jobs have increased, while a recent report suggests that the number of full-time psychiatric nurses plummeted by as much as 15% between 2009 and 2014. The project, if nothing else, takes into account insider views and requirements, and hopefully this will reflect positively in terms of the report’s final recommendations.
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