Unite members will be holding a demo tomorrow (21 August) to protest against a lack of jobs for NHS trained mental health workers and the wider problem of “workforce waste” in the service.
When: Friday 21 August 2026, 12 to 1pm
Where: Outside Number 10 North, Heron House, 47 Lloyd Street, Manchester, M2 5LE
Next month in the North West of England alone, 77 newly qualified clinical psychologists will face the prospect of unemployment or leaving the NHS for private practice.
The NHS has spent £19.25 million of public money in training these workers over three years. Unite is calling for emergency funding to be made available for these workers, as well as to ensure that future cohorts of clinical psychologists in the North West and across England have funded NHS career opportunities on qualification, so that publicly funded training is matched by planned NHS employment.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “We are seeing the same crisis in the NHS year after year. Highly trained, essential workers who plan to dedicate their careers to caring for others are unable to find jobs or leave the NHS as posts don’t exist.
“This situation is a disgrace. The NHS must invest in careers, not unemployment. We will not allow our clinical psychologist members to be dumped on the scrapheap due to a crisis not of their making and they have our full support in their fight to secure work.”
In the North West there is already a severe shortage of clinical psychologists. Government and local leaders say mental health services need transforming with prime minister Andy Burnham recently announcing plans to create a network of almost 200 community mental health centres and mental health A&Es across the UK by 2029 – but this expansion cannot happen without retaining workers already trained by the NHS.
The NHS is currently spending billions on temporary staffing while turning away the professionals it has just trained. Patients are suffering, with long waiting lists due to many NHS services not having enough permanent staff and current NHS staff are overworked.
This is not just happening in clinical psychology but across the whole of the NHS including nursing, physiotherapy and social work. Unite is calling for long-term workforce planning, permanent NHS careers and safe, effective staff-to-patient ratios in every NHS service.
Unite representative and clinical psychologist John Mulligan said: “The crisis facing newly qualified clinical psychologists in the North West is part of a much bigger national problem about the future of NHS careers. Short-term austerity and so called efficiency savings are wasting public investment and further eroding already desperately under-resourced services.
“We need sensible long-term workforce planning, permanent NHS careers and safe, effective staff-to-patient ratios in every NHS service. That’s better for patients, current staff, the next generation of NHS workers and the long-term use of public money. Planned improvements to the NHS cannot happen unless Unite’s demands are met.”