CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Caroline Waterfield, deputy head of employment services for NHS Employers, discusses the importance of developing support workers.
M
anagers in the NHS are finding new and effective ways to develop their staff, both as individuals and as a work- force. As part of this, NHS Employers is encouraging organisations to recognise the expanding range of roles support workers can undertake. As a key part of the work- force their personal and professional devel- opment can benefit patient care.
Enhancing the scope of support worker roles can successfully increase quality out- comes and improve services, even in the face of challenging efficiency targets. This will only work, though, if this is imple- mented as part of a whole workforce de- velopment plan linked to delivering service needs.
Major NHS change
The White Paper, ‘Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS’, sets out a major pro- gramme for change and support workers can fit well into this emerging NHS. It asks employers to rethink the configuration of their workforces and to take an active role in its planning and in commissioning education and training. This is a positive move for employers who consistently in- dicate that planning of the workforce must be done as a whole, moving beyond a focus only on traditional professional groups.
There is a clearly an important role for support workers in helping employers ful- fil service requirements in the emerging, changing NHS. The combination of their core generic skills with more specialist competences enables them to provide the fundamentals of care to patients or clients whilst also releasing time from registered professionals to focus on areas that they have been uniquely trained to do.
They offer a certain flexibility within the workforce and this is being increasingly sought after because of a range of factors including local workforce demographics, changes in many pre- and post-registration healthcare training courses and changes to the immigration rules. This is coupled with a continued need to deliver services in dif- ferent ways and across care boundaries.
In the past, employers may have looked to fill gaps in the workforce with agency or temporary workers. From now on, the
Case study 1
Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust created its own local Calderdale Framework to develop the role of the assistant practitioner. The Framework provides a clear and sys- tematic method of reviewing skill mix, role and service design to ensure safe and effective patient-centred care.
As a result, the trust was able to devel- op new assistant practitioner roles to support improved service delivery and more effectively use their registered workforce to benefit patients.
Case study 2
NHS Leeds Community Healthcare developed their community support worker roles to enable teams to man- age increasing workloads and use the registered nursing workforce in differ- ent ways to better support patients. The development of the framework has helped to both enhance patient care and reduce costs and it is being rolled out into other areas of the organisation.
Case study 3
The Black Country Partnership NHS Foundation Trust was concerned with the age demographic of its workforce and with changes to nurse pre-reg- istration education. This provided an opportunity to consider addressing the widening participation agenda whilst addressing a worrying workforce sup- ply trend.
By mapping starters and leavers and collating data for presentation to the trust board they chose to introduce apprenticeships, standardise job de- scriptions for bands 2 and 3 healthcare support workers and have a plan to im- plement assistant practitioners.
The trust believes they can make sig- nificant savings over a five-year period whilst simultaneously increasing the headcount within a transparent career framework that is attractive to appli- cants from the local community.
pressing need to reduce the amount spent on agency workers leads employers back to the point of re-examining the current work- force, performing skills audits and agreeing an organisation-wide plan to develop the workforce to meet the needs of the service.
On-the-job learning has a strong future for all staff and particularly so for those in support worker roles. Employers may use some of the many approved apprentice- ship frameworks offering opportunities through the levels of the career framework. Alternatively they can choose to use other accredited vocational qualifications offered in partnership with local colleges or univer- sities or use a mixture of both dependent on local needs.
In tight financial circumstances, it can be difficult to create bespoke development packages for your organisation. Work- based learning is one solution because it offers an opportunity to tailor training for your own needs whilst still offering the individual recognised and transferable ac- creditation. It is also increasingly necessary to share experience and learning with other employers and utilise nationally developed resources.
Ensuring success
Whether employers look to introduce a new assistant practitioner role, encourage apprenticeships or develop healthcare sup- port workers to have additional skills and competences, there are some clear tips that have emerged from employers:
• Collect data about your current work- force to inform your plan;
• Ensure the objectives of your staff devel- opment plan are linked to your organi- sational plan;
• The objectives must be articulated clear- ly enough to reassure current staff, who may be unsettled by change.
The NHS Employers organisation has a web section dedicated to the support work- force and in addition to a published brief- ing this acts as a hub of information for employers and a signpost to other relevant resources for employers.
FOR MORE INFORMATION The microsite is at
tinyurl.com/3szvtbm
national health executive May/Jun 11 | 47
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