Our Psychological Professions Workforce Strategy
The West Yorkshire & Harrogate Psychological Professions Workforce Strategy aims to identify and meet the challenges facing the psychological professions now and in the future, including the targets set in the NHS Five Year Forward View and the NHS Long Term Plan.
The NHS is facing significant workforce challenges which have been further exacerbated by the covid pandemic. The psychological impact of the pandemic on staff, service users and wider community have been well articulated with modelling indicating that the demand for psychological interventions and approaches to care will significantly increase.
We already know prior to the pandemic that there was increasing demand for access to psychological therapies, with individuals wanting safe and effective services that provided a choice of treatment and support. The Psychological Professions are all key roles in trying to address this demand for psychologically informed care, influencing and shaping the development of services; delivering therapeutic activity and evaluating impact.
Our psychological professions workforce spans mental health, community, acute, primary care, social care, independent and the third sector services. This strategy proposes that the first phase of the work will focus on the NHS workforce prioritising a comprehensive gap analysis; career development and expansion plans; enhancing and embedding psychological leadership in the commissioning, development and operation of services.
The key stakeholders involved in drafting this Strategy include:
- Senior Psychological Professions Leadership
- Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism (MHLDA) Workforce Lead
- Health Education England (HEE) West Yorkshire and Harrogate Workforce Transformation Lead
- Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise Sector
- Place Workforce Planning leads
Our ambition is to embed psychological knowledge and practice across the whole health and care system, and in order to contribute in a meaningful way to the ‘reset and recovery’ agenda and to ‘building back fairer’ after the Covid pandemic, we need to have a comprehensive understanding of our diverse workforce to support effective planning. Representation and inclusion are key, as is ensuring that the services we provide meet the diverse needs of our communities. The first iteration of this report is yet to be discussed with service user and carer representatives; and wider involvement of voluntary, community and social enterprise sector colleagues is also needed to understand their workforce challenges in the provision of NHS services and ways of working together to maximise the impact of our provision to meet the increasing demand for psychological therapies and psychologically informed care.
New regional network
The Psychological Professions Network (PPN) is a membership network for all psychological professionals and other stakeholders in NHS commissioned psychological healthcare. The Network is commissioned by Health Education England to provide a joined-up voice for psychological professions in workforce planning, development, and to support excellence in practice.
The North East and Yorkshire PPN is our new and emerging regional network. We want to broaden our network and contacts to expand our collective voice to maximise the benefits of the psychological professions across our region.
We have been working with our colleagues across all the regional PPNs to develop the key foundations of what a PPN is:
We have developed our first national vision that was launched for Psychological Professions, click here to see this vision.
In the NHS in the Long Term Plan there are eight ways that Psychological Professions will support the delivery of the ambitions in the plan, through promotion, prevention and intervention. You can look at the eight ways here
By clicking here you will be able to see the 12 psychological professions in NHS funded healthcare that we recognise at PPN NEY. However, we do not limit membership to these 12 professions.