We will work in partnership drawing insight and expertise from partners in the NHS, local authorities, integrated care systems, workforce development sector, frontline practitioners, and people with lived experience to:
Our strategy
2023-2028
Our vision is a thriving mental health workforce.
One that has the investment it needs to support people to live the life they want and deserve.
We will be bolder in our support for the workforce. We will advocate for growth, for investment and opportunities to connect and develop, so that every person who experiences mental health problems receives timely, tailored, and holistic support.
What follows is an overview of how we will get there. This is just the start. We look forward to working with many of you to make this a reality.
Philippa Mariani, CEO
Mental health is one of the defining national challenges.
One in four adults in England experience mental ill-health.
A third of families include someone with mental health needs.
The suicide rate has been slowly increasing over years.
But against this backdrop of increasing need, there is a workforce crisis across our mental health services. The sector is struggling to attract people into it and seeing record numbers of people leaving it.
The result being thousands left on waiting lists and in crisis, with the strain on services and our professionals becoming greater and greater. We cannot hope to meet the mental health challenge without investing in the workforce.
What we will do
We will recruit, train and promote the mental health workforce, to enable the best support for people living with mental health needs.
These four goals guide our work:
Increase public and policy engagement with the mental health sector
Identify research and innovation for workforce solutions
Plug the gap between demand and supply in the mental health workforce
Create an entrepreneurial outlook to increase our impact
How we will do it
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Put people with lived experience at the heart of everything we do.
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Ensure that our commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion in the mental health workforce drives our decision-making.
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Engage with and enhance the impact of our mental health social work alumni to inform our agenda for change and development.
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Develop relationships and engage with our audiences (regulators, policymakers, government, educators and employers) conferences and events, to help to shape new opportunities that support the mental health workforce in social work and care.
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Seek funding for baseline research and benchmarking in mental health social work.
Join with us
We stand with the mental health sector: our partners, practitioners and the people who use services.
We can only build a thriving mental health workforce fit for the future if we work together. If you are interested in working with or engaging with us, we would love to hear from you.