Luciana Berger – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-10-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what provisions are in place to support and promote the mental wellbeing of the NHS workforce.

Ben Gummer

Employers across the National Health Service are responsible for the mental health and wellbeing of their staff.

The Department commissions NHS Employers to help trusts improve staff mental health and wellbeing through advice, guidance and good practice[1].

In addition, trusts have access to local data from the NHS Staff Survey, the staff Friends and Family test as well as local information to help them develop and implement local improvement plans.

The recent launch of the How are you feeling NHS?[2] Toolkit by NHS Employers is aimed at enabling staff to talk more openly about their emotional health, improving the assessment of the impact emotional wellbeing has on staff and patients and enabling action planning to improve staff emotional health and wellbeing. Since it launched on 29 July it has had more than 16,000 views.

[1] http://www.nhsemployers.org/search-results?q=supporting+staff+who+are+experiencing+mental+health+issues

[2] http://www.nhsemployers.org/your-workforce/retain-and-improve/staff-experience/health-work-and-wellbeing/protecting-staff-and-preventing-ill-health/how-are-you-feeling-nhs-toolkit