Hello, my name is Sonya Robertshaw and I’m the Workforce Lead for the Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism (MHLDA) Programme in West Yorkshire. I lead initiatives on recruitment and retention, employee wellbeing, new role development, schools career engagement, and inclusive recruitment.

A key focus is engaging with schools and colleges to inspire future Mental Health and Learning Disability Nurses. The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan highlights a potential shortfall in this workforce. In West Yorkshire, we identified significant gaps, anticipating a 16% vacancy rate in Mental Health nursing and 14% in Learning Disability Nursing by 2028.

To address this, we collaborated with Ahead Partnership to develop interactive careers engagement sessions with local schools and colleges. These resources and activities were co-produced with clinical staff and educational professionals.

We engaged 6500 students through live activities and over 8000 through digital resources. The programme included:

• 16 virtual inspiration guest speaker sessions – short hybrid sessions fitting into school assemblies and form time.
• Video support workbooks – resources accompanying career spotlight videos featuring service users Stan and Amy, highlighting various NHS roles. Booklets included worksheets, lesson plans, case studies, and information sheets.
• 13 ‘Have a go’ workshops – tasks providing insight into sector roles, including reading service user profiles and role-playing activities.
• 5 Insight sessions – half-day events with multiple workshops and volunteer interactions to allow for a deeper dive into sector roles.
• 5 Career panels – opportunities for students to hear from volunteers about their career journeys and ask questions.

The sessions also aimed to raise awareness about mental health and learning disabilities, emphasising empathy skills and understanding.

The programme showcased other associated roles, including physios, dieticians, occupational therapists, and speech and language therapists.

Student feedback included: “I like that it helps us know more about nursing. She gave me the hope of becoming a nurse one day”, “I like how we got to put ourselves in the shoes of a learning disability nurse. It helped me to understand the job more.”

The full engagement report can be found here.

Resources for schools and colleges are available here for anyone to access.

For more information email sonya.robertshaw@nhs.net.