NHS 10 Year Workforce Plan: Read the NCPS Submission

The Society submitted our response to the NHS 10-Year Workforce Plan early November, pulling together a wide range of research, real-world examples, and reflections from across our membership gained through our annual member surveys and direct input from members.

For years now, since the introduction of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) model (now NHS Talking Therapies), national policy has leaned towards protocol-driven, highly standardised, process-based mental health support. These interventions have their place, of course, but by focusing on process we’ve missed what’s really important: the relational depth, the attunement and co-regulation, that comes from sitting with someone in a genuinely therapeutic relationship. 

Our submission to the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) encourages the Government to take a wider view, in line with their three shifts: hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention.

We’ve set out how counsellors & psychotherapists already deliver relational support across community settings, schools, primary care, and voluntary services. Many are, as we know, already acting as a first point of contact for people who might otherwise end up waiting months for help or presenting in crisis. With over 60,000 practitioners on Accredited Registers, there is a national workforce ready to step in and reduce pressure on GPs, A&E departments, and specialist services simply by being more visible and more consistently integrated into local pathways.

We also spoke about the growing role of digital tools, and the need for these to be used thoughtfully. Technology can absolutely widen access and make life easier for practitioners and administrators within the NHS, but only if it strengthens the relational element of the work rather than standing in for it. We highlighted the importance of safeguarding, accountability, and oversight when it comes to AI mental health support, and shared the principles set out in our own relational safeguards framework. 

In terms of the prevention shift, we already know that when people access relational support early, whether through their GP, a school counsellor, or a local hub, they’re more likely to stay well and less likely to need crisis interventions later on. There’s strong evidence showing the long-term social and economic value of early intervention, and again we encouraged the NHS to make use of the workforce that’s already trained and ready to help. 

Throughout the submission, in each section, we emphasised the importance of choice. People benefit when they can work with a therapist who feels like the right fit for them: someone who they feel understands their world and their way of communicating. That sense of connection can be transformational, and commissioning models should reflect that truth rather than treating mental health support as a single, interchangeable product – prescribing one person to another to ‘treat’ an issue with mental or emotional health is akin to giving every person who goes to their GP with a physical ailment paracetamol, or perhaps worse – a random drug that may or may not actually work with what’s going on for them.

Our hope is that the NHS 10-Year Workforce Plan changes how mental health support is understood and delivered across the country. Relational work is the foundation of good mental health care, and the evidence has shown this again and again, and we need to design services based on our understanding of this principle.