Education and Training
Statement of importance
Numbers are necessary, but not sufficient. A well educated, capable and supervised workforce committed to continuinglearning is key to delivering effective services, which are valued by service users and their supporters.
Common across all strands of the Children’s NSF and Every Child Matters is the need to ensure that all those working with children and families have the necessary values, competencies, skills, and ongoing training to enable them to recognise and respond to the identified needs of children. The level and depth of these skills will vary depending on the role of the professional but they need to engender a genuinely child-centred approach, without prejudicial views of particular groups of children and with high expectations for all.
An adequate and competent workforce is fundamental to the successful improve outcomes for children and young people. Many professionals however who work directly with children and young people lack training on children’s mental health. Currently many of those entering posts within specialist CAMHS do not hold specialist child and adolescent qualifications and in some cases have not worked within a child and adolescent environment. The lack of training in children’s mental health on core and more advanced training programmes for professionals working directly with children and young people has a major impact on the type of services provided to many children, young people and families.
It is essential that the skills and competencies of the CAMHS workforce at all levels of service provision meet the mental health needs of the population served. In addition to the generic skills that are required to work with and support children, young people and their families, specialist workers should be trained, supervised and supported to be capable of delivering a full range of interventions, based upon the best available evidence. The development of education and training opportunities will provide clear career pathways and encourage more people to work with children and enhance the skills of those who work with children as a priority.
More than four million people in England work with children, or support those working with children. This includes an estimated 2.4 million paid staff and 1.8 million unpaid staff and volunteers. In addition, many professionals such as GPs and hospital staff play an important role in supporting children and families, but also have wider responsibilities. Figures below give estimates of the numbers of full-time equivalent staff in some of the key roles working with children, young people and their families and employed by local authorities, schools, the NHS, and the private and voluntary sectors. The children’s services workforce is diverse, with people entering at various stages in their lives.
Health: 13,000 health visitors, 2,500 school nurses, almost 6,000 speech and language therapists, and over 50,000 other health professionals including paediatricians, children’s nurses and midwives
Early years and childcare: 83,000 early years workers and 280,000 childcare workers
Schools workforce: 440,000 teachers and 230,000 school support staff
Social workers: 40,000 children and families social workers
Education welfare: 3,000 education welfare officers
Connexions: 7,000 Connexions personal advisers
Youth work: 7,000 youth workers
Play: 30,000 play workers
Sport: 400,000 sports and leisure workers
Youth offending: 5,000 people working in Youth Offending Teams and 5,000 people working in the juvenile secure estate
Principles of Training
All education and Training should facilitate the development of a unified culture for CAMHS with true inter-agency working, the education and professional development provided for staff must be accessible and useful, at all levels from unqualified support staff to professionally qualified workers. The structure within which professional development will be provided will therefore need to be flexible. It will need to be based upon a common core framework of knowledge, skills and attitudes and that can be delivered as a module or modules.
Conclusions
In summary, we need to commit to a strategy for training development which:
- Responds creatively and clearly to the government’s mental health modernisation and workforce development agendas.
- Increases access to training for front-line mental health staff.
- Enhances the capabilities and competencies of mental health practitioners within specialist CAMHS, and builds capacity to design and deliver comparable training locally.
- Evaluates the impact of training programmes upon staff, and the delivery of clinical services.
- Makes a distinctive contribution to meeting national mental health training needs, based on our strengths as an organisation providing multidisciplinary mental health services in and for the NHS.
- Creates an environment where on-going education, training and development is valued and actively promoted.
- Creates a pathway that is adaptable to the needs and experience of the individual.
- Creates a pathway that can be monitored and evaluated.
- Creates a pathway that is not onerous but is sustainable and is a renewable resource.
- Links any created pathway into IPR, PDP, CPD planning for the individual.
- Links any created pathway into strategic planning both locally, regionally and nationally.
- Is multi-disciplinary team based training, shared learning
Challenges
- Accessible modularised CAMH training fit for purpose and practice and offered according to CAMHS tier
- Collaborative commissioning/development of training health/social care/education and voluntary sector
- Accredited CPD Post registration/backfill training
- Supervision networks to meet expansion of clinical training and services
- Higher education institutions and validating bodies to be involved to ensure CAMH in pre-registration education/national bench marking/competences
- Capacity building in HEIs, investment in training and accrediting trainers
- A recognised training matrix, with flexible pathways for education and career development
- Funding to be expanded and negotiated locally by Commissioners, SHAs and Providers
- Much current training, as identified is inadequate to produce newly qualified staff with the relevant values, skills and knowledge (“capabilities”)
- Staff and organisations are not always committed to lifelong learning.
- Commissioners not regularly reviewing the content, quality and the method of delivery of E&T
- Service users and carers are not regularly involved throughout the whole E&T process
- Many employers do not carry out a Training Needs Analysis nor provide sufficient resources; nor dedicated time from a lead person within the organisation
- StHAs/WDCs are not generally prioritising mental health.
- Lack of proactive use of competency/capability frameworks to help address E&T needs.
