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Learning disability and mental health nursing: new plans for change

I recently met an amazing team at the St Aubyn Centre in Colchester. This is a specialist health service that cares for people with learning disabilities or mental health issues. It was great to meet them and chat through some of the changes in practices they have made in their response to COVID.

The mental health and learning disability needs of our population are so complex and diverse that it takes a unique set of skills and expertise to be a nurse in these areas. In addition to being highly skilled clinicians, these nurses must be adept in their approach, with a high level of empathy, intelligence and sensitivity to tune in with people who need very particular, personalised care. In my visits to services across England, I have seen many outstanding examples of how this type of expertise aids a person’s recovery.

Yet despite the brilliance of colleagues working in these specialist fields, we know we have much more to do. For people with learning disabilities and autistic people, we must reduce premature deaths, whilst ensuring we equip all staff with a greater awareness of people’s needs.

For mental health, we must strive to ensure parity of esteem between physical and mental health needs, dispelling many of the long-standing myths and stigma associated with mental health which can contribute to those with a mental illness dying 20 years earlier than the general population.

When I began as Chief Nursing Officer for England, I made a very personal commitment to ensure the voice of mental health nurses and learning disability nurses are meaningfully represented, and that the necessary investment in these vital branches of nursing is secured.

With this priority in mind, we have developed a new ‘All England plan’ for learning disability nursing. Another one for mental health nursing is underway, for launch later this year. Each plan sets out a range of ambitions to attract, retain, develop and celebrate people in these roles, and the value and contribution of each respective branch.
Across all parts of the system, COVID-19 has highlighted the unrelenting contribution of nurses everywhere. For learning disability nurses and mental health nurses, their unfaltering commitment to the people they care for is beyond question. They continued to provide this essential care and support throughout the lockdown period transforming services in many cases overnight to ensure those with a learning disability, autism and or a mental health condition continued to receive the care they needed. The new, dedicated ‘All England plans’, send an extremely powerful message; and that is, there has never been a better time to be, or to become a learning disability nurse or a mental health nurse.

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