This year’s Mental Health Awareness Week theme is ‘Kindness’.

✅ 24/7 access to mental health support for health and social care workers, through a dedicated helpline

✅ Guarantees that health and care staff will no longer be penalised for time off due to mental or physical ill health by scrapping the Bradford scoring system and other HR practices that can create a culture of presenteeism

✅ Introduce an 'occupational health passport' so workers do not have to relive mental health traumas if or when they change jobs
Additional training to ensure there are mental health first-aiders in every health and care workforce

✅ Steps to standardise the quality and service offer to ensure that every health and social care worker can access the same, high standard of mental care support regardless of the region in which they are based

The roll out of these services must be for all staff, whether or not they are directly involved in patient treatment, in recognition of the wide scale of the impact of the COVID-19 across all teams. If adopted, the proposals will improve access to mental health support for all those working in health and care settings.

Munira Wilson, Liberal Democrat Health, Wellbeing and Social Care spokesperson said:

"COVID-19 will leave a deep scar on our health and care workforce, who have gone above and beyond to tackle this dreadful virus. Thousands have lost colleagues, endured serious illness, or faced significant trauma.

"Whilst we can hope to get a grip on COVID-19 in the coming months, the mental health impacts will last a lifetime. That is why the Liberal Democrats are proposing a series of measures to ensure no-one slips through the net as the scale of the mental health impact of this crisis emerges.