Mr Patsy McGlone (Mid Ulster): To ask the Minister of Health whether any assessment has been made of the long-term sustainability of the palliative care workforce.
Minister of Health: I recognise the importance of ensuring we have a health and social care workforce who are equipped to provide palliative and end of life care for people with life-limiting conditions and for those who are important to them.
The majority of palliative care is delivered by generalist health care professionals, including the patient’s GP, District Nurse and other healthcare professionals in hospitals and care homes.
The Palliative Care in Partnership Programme, which is co-led by my Department are currently developing a Regional Palliative and End of Life Care Education and Learning Framework. The framework will support providers across all care settings to sure their staff have the required skills and competencies to care for people approaching the end of their life. The Framework document is due to be finalised later this year.
In addition, individual Health and Social Care Trusts and independent providers are responsible for ensuring their respective specialist palliative workforces are sufficiently staffed to care for people with more complex palliative care symptoms or circumstances. As employers, they are responsible for the operational workforce planning that supports this including safe staffing levels, operational vacancy management and recruitment, skill mix, career progression pathways and workforce design to support new models of care.
My Department leads strategic workforce planning for the entire region. Working in partnership with key stakeholders, it aims to secure workforce supply across the entire HSC over a 5 – 10-year horizon, encouraging opportunities for workforce development and supporting transformation.
A strategic workforce review for specialist palliative care is currently being considered in my Department. This comprises an initial Report, a subsequent Addendum (to address changes in postgraduate medical education and new pharmacy data) and an Update (in light of COVID-19 and the response to that pandemic). When the review is accepted this will be published on the Departmental website.
The capacity of the specialist palliative care workforce is being considered as part of wider palliative and end of life care Baseline Scoping exercise being undertaken by my Department. The outcomes of the Baseline Scoping will inform the future strategic direction for palliative care and the planning and commissioning of palliative care services.
My Department are committed to ensuring the sustainability of palliative and end of life care services to meet population need and continue to engage with Health and Social Care Trusts, the Public Health Agency and the voluntary and hospice sector to consider how workforce challenges in palliative care can best be addressed as part of future service planning and reform.
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