A focus on staff care & development 

NHS England’s two-year Culture of Care programme will support organisations to improve the culture of inpatient mental health, learning disability and autism wards across England. It will ensure patients and staff feel wards are safe, therapeutic and equitable places to be cared for, and fulfilling places to work.

Staff Care & Development is one of six strands of the Culture of Care programme. It will support inpatient ward staff – from both NHS and independent providers – to develop team cultures and systems so that people on the ward feel safe and cared for. Through site visits and focus groups, skills-based training, coaching and reflective practice training & supervision, the offer will focus on high-quality relational care, positive informal interactions on the ward, and psychologically safe environments.

Our offer lasts for six months, and we are running 3 cohorts over the next 2 years. You can find out more about our offer here.

You can find out a little more about some of the other strands in the Culture of Care Programme here.

We do not manage registration for the other areas of the programme, and these can be applied to separately. 

Working with ward staff from 60 in-patient mental health care providers to build the 12 principles of the Culture of Care programme in to everyday ward culture

Between September 2024 and March 2026, the staff care & development offer will support inpatient services to co-produce effective support for staff on mental health inpatient wards across 60 Mental Health Trusts across England that improve culture of care and aligns to the 12 core commitments in the Culture of Care standards, by April 2026.

Our programme will:

• Work with mental health care services that provide care to inpatients
• Provide team learning, coaching, reflective practice and change projects to: support cultural change, build capacity for wards to improve culture independently & empower staff teams to co-produce and deliver change ideas
• Incorporate Lived Experience input at all levels
• Share and disseminate good practice and learning coming out of the programme

We are splitting our delivery in to 3 cohorts:

We will advertise to register new teams prior to the beginning of each cohort.

Indicative start dates for the 3 cohorts:

• Cohort 1: September 2024
• Cohort 2: Early Spring 2025
• Cohort 3: Autumn 2025

Each cohort lasts six months.