To ask the Minister of Health to detail the steps being taken to overcome and reduce the number of health and social care staff absentees.

Management and reduction of sickness absence is a priority both for my Department and trust employers. All HSC employers have a duty of care to staff and are committed to promoting staff health and wellbeing and robustly managing sickness absence among our workforce.

Each trust has a comprehensive health and wellbeing strategy for staff that has been co-developed in partnership with Trade Union colleagues. The focus of these strategies are preventative measures that enable good mental, emotional, physical and financial wellbeing.

Staff are also supported with a range of free and inclusive initiatives including fast track physio, confidential counselling, Here4U activities, person centred reasonable adjustments and a comprehensive suite of improving working lives opportunities. Each of these proactive measures are designed to improve staff health and wellbeing overall and thus reduce absence.

The continued roll out of the Vaccination programme, including Booster and Flu Vaccines is also an important tool in reducing absence levels.

Trusts work collaboratively with our regional trade union and HSC colleagues to harmonise our approach to managing absence to ensure consistency in accordance with HSC values. Absence is managed within each Trust at a local level. There are identified HR leads for each directorate, providing regular data and analysis, bespoke advice on cases and where individual sickness absence can’t be sustained, a range of pathways are explored on a case by case basis in accordance with the Regional Absence Framework and local Management of Attendance Protocol.