9 October 2024

Monday 14 October marks National Allied Health Profession (AHP) day, where this wonderful collection of professions are recognised and celebrated. 

As the third-largest clinical workforce within health and care, Allied Health Professions (AHPs) play a pivotal role in supporting the NHS Long-Term Plan. AHPs Day is an annual occasion for AHPs in England and now internationally to unite and revel in their contribution.

At CNWL, we're lucky to have a dedicated, thriving and innovative group of over 1,200 AHP staff working across the Trust in mental health and physical health; inpatient and community services as well as our specialist clinical areas. Our AHPs are made up of physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, dieticians, paramedics, art therapists, drama therapists, dance movement psychotherapists, music therapists and podiatrists. 

The CAHPO (Chief Allied Health Professions Officer) for England, Professor Suzanne Rastrick OBE, will deliver a live address to the AHP workforce at 9:30am on AHPs’ Day. This address will express gratitude, acknowledgment, and inspiration to our dedicated colleagues. NHS England » Allied health professions (AHPs’) day

Please support your AHP colleagues to celebrate with a cuppa and a cake, or local celebrations in your teams; we know they make a massive difference to patients’ lives and would love you to share your appreciation for them. 

On 17 October, we’re holding a Therapies Showcase, which is a chance for our AHP teams to share their innovations, good practice and year highlights with the whole Trust.  We have an exciting programme planned and are delighted to host this remotely allowing all AHP staff to join for the day or dip into presentations they are interested in. 

For all the AHP’s out there – we thank you for all you do everyday and hope you go about your day with pride and shout loud about your profession, your role and the impact you make every day. 

At CNWL we are in the final stages of developing our new AHP workforce strategy, we know that staffing our teams continues to be a challenge, however, we can see improvements in the AHP workforce data over the last year and we are excited to build on this with the new strategy. 

During 2024 we are working towards producing a set of recommendations on preventing health problems. Each professional group are producing a one-page summary of their recommendations focused in on their area of expertise.