Overlooking clinical support staff could jeopardise mental health

Access to high quality mental health services could be put at risk if the experiences of clinical support staff working in these services continue to be overlooked, says the Nuffield Trust.

Research reveals significant differences between the experiences of over 41,000 frontline staff supporting mental health services, especially around flexible working, bullying, discrimination and career progression, in comparison to the wider NHS workforce.

Clinical support staff make up more than a third of all NHS clinical staff working in mental health services, and therefore will play a key role in helping to meet the increase in demand for mental health services due to the pandemic.

The new report is the most comprehensive analysis to date of this under-explored and often overlooked group. It looks at electronic staff records, a bespoke data analysis of the 2019 NHS staff survey, freedom of information requests around recruitment and a review of job adverts.

The Nuffield Trust found that mental health support staff experience higher rates of physical violence (37 per cent) from patients, their relatives or members of the public than across all staff working in mental health (17 per cent) or clinical support staff working in other services (29 per cent).

Additionally, while some career progression pathways are accessible through apprenticeship routes, such as health care assistants progressing to nursing associates and then to registered nurses, only one per cent of mental health support workers who are employed in the NHS for a year moved into trainee nursing associate roles.

Dr Billy Palmer, Nuffield Trust Senior Fellow and report co-author, said: “There has been a long-standing failure to address unmet mental health need in the NHS, and due to Covid-19, demand for mental health services has only increased.”

“Despite government commitments to expand high-quality mental health services to an extra 2 million people in the next two years, we find that the mental health support workforce, who are at the forefront of delivering patient care, are often left unsupported, not afforded flexible working and face increased discrimination.”

“Failure to attract people to these vital roles in mental health services could mean people waiting longer for treatment, and impact on care quality and other NHS services.”