Is A healthier Wales: our workforce strategy for health and social care actually a strategy?

Abstract

This article will argue that A healthier Wales: our workforce strategy for health and social care, produced by Health Education and Improvement Wales and Social Care Wales and endorsed by the Welsh Government in 2020, is best understood as a statement of ambitions, rather than as a strategy. NHS England's approach to workforce strategy, as set out in the Interim NHS people plan and other documents, elicits both points of similarity and key differences. This article reviews various conceptions of what a strategy might be and concludes that, although A healthier Wales contains elements of a number of different approaches to strategy, the absence of a delivery plan makes it of limited use. The length of time it has taken to produce and approve this document, as well as the delay in producing a delivery plan, is considered a critical weakness.