Prevention concordat for better mental health: consensus statement

Describes the consensus statement of the prevention concordat for better mental health and lists the signatories. Read Government policy paper here

Progress of the 'Five Year Forward View for Mental Health': on the road to parity

This report is the product of an in depth inquiry into the progress of the government's mental health strategy, the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.  Click here to read further.

NHS England announces areas to receive new funding to improve employment support for people with severe mental illness

As outlined in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health and Implementing the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, NHS England has committed to doubling access to Individual Placement and Support (IPS) services nationally by 2020/21, enabling approximately 20,000 people who experience a severe mental illness (SMI) to find and retain employment. Click here to view NHS England news

Think Autism strategy: governance refresh

The way that the Department of Health and Social Care and other organisations monitor the progress of the autism strategy has been updated.  Click here to read further.

UK strategy for rare diseases: implementation plan for England

Sets out the actions DHSC and partner organisations will take to implement the commitments under the UK strategy for rare diseases.

HEE launches supported return to training strategy

Health Education England has launched a strategy and investment plan which details ten commitments to ensure that trainees are supported on their return to training pathway.

There are more than 50,000 doctors undertaking postgraduate training in England. At least 10 per cent of these will need to take time out of their programme for a variety of reasons such as parental leave, sickness or bereavement, to gain additional experience or training outside of the postgraduate training programme, to conduct academic research, or to take a career break.

Making strategic commissioning work: lessons from home and away

With the move towards accountable care, clinical commissioners are starting to take on a more strategic role. This report from NHS Clinical Commissioners aims to support commissioners in these new functions by outlining best practice from health systems around the world which are developing policy around new care models and place-based systems of care.

National health and care workforce strategy unveiled

A system-wide workforce strategy for the NHS and social care launches today for consultation: Facing the Facts, Shaping the Future, A Health and Care Workforce Strategy for England to 2027.

The content has been led and coordinated by Health Education England, but is published as a product of the whole national system including NHS England, NHS Improvement and Public Health England.

The draft strategy looks at the major workforce plans for the Five Year Forward View priorities: cancer; mental health; maternity; primary and community care; and urgent and emergency care.

Retention: Showcasing Best Practice, Celebrating success and Looking to the Future

On 5 December 2017, NHS Employers hosted an event, Retention: Showcasing Best Practice, Celebrating success and Looking to the Future.

As part of the event, trusts presented on their key successes in the rollout of retention strategies to improve staff leaver and turnover rates. These included:

• Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
• Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
• Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

New careers strategy to develop the future workforce

The Department of Education has launched a new careers strategy to better equip young people with the skills they need, and employers want, post-Brexit.

Aims of the strategy include building a careers system that encourages earlier engagement between employers and the potential future workforce, and increasing the knowledge of education providers, and young people, about the different routes into employment.

Cancer workforce plan: phase 1: delivering the cancer strategy to 2021

This workforce plan outlines how HEE will ensure that the NHS has enough staff with the right skills to deliver improvements for people affected by cancer over the next three years. It also provides detailed data on key professions so that cancer alliances, HEE and employers can agree the actions needed for recruitment, training and staff retention.

New maternity strategy to reduce the number of stillbirths

The government has announced a new maternity strategy to reduce the number of stillbirths as part of plans to make the NHS the safest place in the world to give birth.

Families who suffer stillbirth or life-changing injuries to their babies will be offered an independent investigation to find out what went wrong and why. Full-term stillbirths will be investigated by coroners.

UK five year antimicrobial resistance strategy 2013-2018: annual progress report, 2016

DH's third annual progress report on the UK's antimicrobial resistance strategy describes the activities and achievements over 2016.

It notes that for the remaining two years of the strategy, the programme will focus on the delivery of the government's ambitions to halve certain types of infections and the inappropriate use of antibiotics.

See also Call to Action on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). a summary of roundtable on antimicrobial resistance. This report summarises the discussions that took place and the resulting underpinning principles for action as agreed by the co-hosts.

Funding and staffing of mental health care: the mirage of parity - The King's Fund

In 2013 the government made a commitment to achieving parity of esteem between physical and mental health. That commitment was followed by a pledge of £1.25 billion for child and adolescent mental health, a national strategy for adult mental health and an investment of £1 billion to support its delivery.  Click here to read full report.

Embedding a culture of quality improvement

This report from the King's Fund explores thefactors that have helped organisations to launch a quality improvement strategy,and the key enablers for sustaining a focus on continuous quality improvement. The report draws on a roundtable event, semi-structured interviews with senior NHS leaders and stakeholders involved in quality improvement initiatives, and a literature review. It identifies relevant learning from organisations that have already adopted quality improvement approaches, and focuses on how senior leaders can create the right conditions for quality improvement to emerge and flourish.

NIHR Signal Individual support of nurses using electronic medicine monitors can improve HIV treatment

Use of electronic pill bottles that record when they are opened and follow-up discussion of the printed readouts with nurses improved HIV outcomes. It is thought that patients became more reliable in taking the medication, which can have complicated scheduling. Overall, the HIV virus in the blood and the risk of treatment failure were lower in the group of patients who had access to this intervention compared to regular care.


In addition to being more effective, the programme also reduced the estimated lifetime cost and disease burden per patient, considering quality and quantity of life lived.


The readouts were used to help focus attention on any patterns of medication usage so that strategies could be discussed to improve adherence. As non-adherence is the main barrier to effective management of HIV, any measures that improve it are welcomed. However, the intervention tested here requires several hours of training for the nurses delivering it and may not be that easy to introduce in practice. Evaluation of the approach in non-trial settings is necessary before wider implementation.

Public Engagement Strategy 2017-2021

The CQC's new strategy for how it will engage with the public. Making better use of people’s views, working closely with representative organisations and publishing simple, clear information are at the centre of its plans for engaging the public over the next four years.

Reward as part of an effective recruitment strategy

This new case study from NHS Employers highlights how Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust used reward, within a clear recruitment strategy to attract employees, increase applications for roles, reduce agency spend and nursing vacancies.

Personalised Health and Care 2020: Patient Carers and Service User Vision

This DH paper outlines how the government and national health and care organisations aim to use information technology within current programmes, to improve health and social care services in England.

New technology, earlier diagnosis and better coordination of care in cancer

“Achieving World-Class Cancer Outcomes – Progress Report 2016-17” describes the significant advances the National Cancer Programme has made over the past year as it moves towards the full delivery of the NHS five-year national cancer strategy. The strategy was developed in 2015 by an Independent Cancer Taskforce that was asked to deliver the vision set out in the NHS Five Year Forward View.

The report describes progress across the field including:

• Modernisation of radiotherapy equipment throughout the country.
• New models of care introduced to ensure cancer is diagnosed earlier and improve survival.
• Establishment of Cancer Alliances across the country to bring together clinical leaders, healthcare workers, patients and charities for better coordination of care.