Funding to boost support worker recruitment

The CSP has welcomed the news that NHS England (NHSE) is investing several million pounds in the recruitment of new staff – including health care support workers – in coming months, and is encouraging physiotherapy service managers to take up this much-needed opportunity to expand capacity.

NHSE has allocated £80million of new funding to support recruitment of nursing staff, healthcare support workers and medical support workers to help providers meet requirements over winter, including over-recruitment of the existing staffing establishment to support MDTs for post-Covid assessment clinics, hospital discharge and discharge to assess services and urgent community response teams.

Announcing the funding, NHS England said: ‘The recruitment of new health care support workers is essential to support the existing workforce. This funding and support offer represent a real opportunity to urgently increase support worker recruitment to mitigate Covid-19 and seasonal pressures and address longer-term workforce challenges’

CSP professional adviser Claire Fordham said: ‘This is really good news. Support workers have made an invaluable contribution to NHS efforts during the pandemic and this is recognition of their crucial role. We are strongly encouraging service managers to take full advantage of this funding to increase capacity within their teams.

‘The CSP has been lobbying for these additional roles and we will continue to push NHSE to take the same approach to increasing capacity in other overstretched services.’

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