NHS Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hubs

The BPS and other health and care professional bodies have written an open letter to Steve Barclay – Secretary of State for Health and Social Care – to urge the government to provide funding for NHS staff mental health and wellbeing hubs. The hubs are being forced to close despite NHS staff sickness absence figures showing a worsening mental health crisis in the NHS workforce.

Government funding for the 40 hubs, which were launched in February 2021 to support NHS and social care staff during the pandemic, ended on 31 March. This is despite worsening absence among NHS staff – a BPS analysis of NHS Digital sickness absence data between November 2021 and October 2022 showed an average of 23 per cent of sickness absences were due to anxiety, stress, depression and other psychiatric illness.

The open letter to Steve Barclay, also signed by the Association of Clinical Psychologists UK, British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, British Association of Social Workers, Royal College of Nursing and NHS Providers, urged the government to provide one year's transitional funding to prevent services coming to an abrupt halt. 'The Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hubs offer a high level of expertise in assessing the needs of NHS and social care colleagues and providing a range of evidence-based interventions to sustain wellbeing. The importance of these services is demonstrated by the fact that demand has increased 72 per cent year on year.'

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