The ageing population combined with the ongoing drive to keep people at home, not in hospital, reinforces the vital role of community nursing.

Yet as figures from the Royal College of Nursing show, the number of community nurses working in the NHS in England have almost halved in a decade; from 12,620 in 2003 to 6,656 in 2013.

As my piece on the Guardian website today explains, community nurses can be employed by NHS trusts, GPs, charities such as Dementia UK or private providers delivering NHS services. However, their numbers are falling. The decline might be attributed to primary care trusts transferring provision to other organisations under the government’s Transforming Community Services programme because those nurses moving to non-NHS providers are not captured in relevant workforce data.

The fall in numbers coincides with healthcare reforms that make their role even more important. “District nurses will be likely to play a significant role in the NHS reforms, particularly around new models of care that shift more care into the community,” according to Rachael Addicott, senior research fellow at health thinktank The King’s Fund.

Read the full piece here.