The challenges of searching for workforce data about new roles in NHS mental health services: a cross-sectional observation study

High quality information is essential for good workforce planning and development, and it is therefore important to have accurate data about roles within services. NHS mental health services have been under great pressure for several years with insufficient staff, high turnover and overwhelming demand. To help address this a variety of new staff roles have been introduced by mental health Trusts, for example, Clinical Associates in Psychology, Mental Health, and Wellbeing Practitioners. This paper describes in detail the difficulties encountered in mapping where these new roles have been introduced in England and how the challenges were addressed. Data was obtained through 26 structured interviews and 5 questionnaires from appropriate mental health Trust representatives in a variety of different leadership roles (eg, clinical leads, human resources leads, workforce development leads). The data was then sense-checked in 3 stakeholder reflection groups with 18 participants including representatives of professional bodies, service providers and policy makers. The data indicated that (1) NHS mental health workforce information is unexpectedly difficult to obtain and (2) sometimes of poor quality, eg, inaccurate or incomplete. Challenges obtaining this data included: • Fragmented responsibility within trusts for data relating to new roles. • Inconsistent nomenclature. • Coding and retrieval issues with the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). The paper concludes that changes to NHS mental health workforce data on new roles are needed, including better access to and a higher quality of data. It offers recommendations for improvement, including role naming consistency and allocation of responsibility for an overview of new roles data.