Joint statement on Workforce Challenges across health and care
- Communication and administration
- Health inequalities
Joint statement on Workforce Challenges across health and care
We have come together as a coalition of patient charities and professional bodies to call on the Government to commit to a serious, comprehensive and fully-resourced response to workforce challenges across health and care, which are now badly impacting people’s experience of health and care.
The current workforce crisis has been developing over decades across the health and care system. While the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath have left many staff feeling burnt out, challenges with recruitment and retention across health and care long pre-date the pandemic. They have real, life and death, implications for people and communities up and down the country.
The impacts of the workforce crisis are felt from cradle to grave, and from diagnosis, through treatment to after care. Gaps in General Practice, secondary care, community-based support, mental health services, and social care impact across every patient group, and are particularly felt in already underserved communities. Too often the debate on staffing health and care happens without people who use these services in the room.
As patient groups we are vocal about the changes we want to see in health and care, including when we need more or better from our health and care staff. But we also know that the changes we want can’t be delivered by staff who are under-supported, over-stretched, and (increasingly) planning to leave. We need an NHS that works for everyone, but we will not get that as long as it is underfunded and under-resourced.
The Government’s response on workforce to date has been far from proportionate to the scale of the challenges faced. As a result, people’s experiences of health and care are getting worse, and, as recent analysis of the British Social Attitudes survey demonstrated, confidence in the health and care system is faltering.
Together with professional bodies, we reject narratives that pit the workforce against the people who use health and care services. Many of us are, or will at some point be, both patients and staff members of these services. The health and wellbeing of our communities is enhanced when health and care services offer good work to local people.
It is critical that the long-anticipated NHS workforce plan is fully-funded, clearly sets out the workforce numbers required, and is built on the needs and aspirations of people who use health and social care services both now and in the future. It must be designed and delivered with the diverse range of people who work in health and care services and who use them.
Health and care professionals must have the time, energy and training they need to deliver personalised care and support that focusses on what matters to us, rather than what is the matter with us.
We ask the Government to treat this challenge with the urgency, seriousness and resource it deserves.
With kind regards,
Sarah Sweeney
Interim Chief Executive
National Voices
With the support of 85 patient charities and professional bodies:
Action against Medical Accidents
Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis
Adfam
Allergy UK
Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance
Association of Anaesthetists
Behçet’s UK
Birth Trauma Association
Birthrights
Blood Cancer UK
British Medical Association Patient Liaison Group
Bowel Cancer UK
British Geriatrics Society
British Liver Trust
C3 Collaborating for Health
Cancer52
Cardiomyopathy UK
Cauda Equina Champions Charity
Crohn’s & Colitis UK
CRPS UK
Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance
Diabetes UK
Disability Rights UK
Dystonia UK
East Staffordshire District Patient Engagement Group
Endometriosis UK
Faculty of Public Health
FND Hope UK
Friends and Families – Empowering Families with Disabled Children
Future Care Capital
Guillain-Barre & Associated Inflammatory Neuropathies
Gender Identity Research and Education Society
Help2Change CIC
Hounslow Borough Respiratory Support Group
ICUsteps
Juvenile Arthritis Research
Kidney Care UK
Long Covid Kids
Long Covid SOS
Long Covid Support
LUPUS UK
Lymphoedema Support Network
Macmillan Cancer Support
Mental Health Foundation
Mental Health UK
Mind
Motor Neurone Disease Association
MS Society
National Association of Deafened People
National Counselling Society
National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society
National Survivor User Network
National Ugly Mugs
Out with Prostate Cancer
Parathyroid UK
Parkinson’s UK
Patient Safety Learning
Patients Association
Positively UK
Pseudomyxoma Survivor
Rethink Mental Illness
Royal College of Emergency Medicine
Royal College of General Practitioners
Royal College of Physicians
Royal College of Psychiatrists
Royal College of Radiologists
Royal Pharmaceutical Society
Scleroderma & Raynaud’s UK
Shine Cancer Support
Stripy Lightbulb CIC
Stroke Association
The Hibbs Lupus Trust
The Neurological Alliance
The Point of Care Foundation
The Richmond Group of Charities
The Royal College of Anaesthetists
The Royal College of Pathologists
Time To Talk Mental Health UK
Together for Short Lives
Turning Point
United Kingdom Acquired Brain Injury Forum
Urostomy Association
Versus Arthritis
Viewpoint
Your SimPal