EDUCATION & TRAINING
Training provider celebrates its half-century
For Eastwood Park, 2019 is more significant than most. This year the long-established training centre celebrates 50 years of delivering specialist engineering, decontamination, and estates and facilities management training. Helen Cornes, senior marketing executive at the Gloucestershire training facility, looks back at its development, and at how its course portfolio has both adapted and expanded over the years, in line with the significant changes in the sector.
Since 1969, Eastwood Park has hosted trainees, engineers, managers, and directors in their formative years – many of whom are now working in healthcare services all over the world, and are today sending their teams for the latest training. Fifty years on, the centre continues to provide world-class healthcare and FM training. Eastwood Park, ‘the training centre’, was founded in 1969 when the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) acquired the estate and established the Hospital Engineering Centre, delivering residential training for National Health Service engineering staff. A short while later, the first ever course for all grades of NHS hospital engineers – ‘Electronics appreciation’ – was delivered, and the centre commonly became known as ‘Falfield’ among NHS employees – a name still frequently used among Eastwood Park’s longstanding delegates today.
In the summer of 1977, the centre extended its facilities with the opening of the brand new Northcroft Hall (today renamed Falfield). It was opened by former President of the Institute of Hospital Engineering (now IHEEM), Lionel Northcroft OBE.
A strong and close rapport IHEEM and Eastwood Park have traditionally enjoyed a strong relationship, both holding ‘the advancement, development, and application of engineering science in health care’ at the heart of all that they do. In the mid-1970s Eastwood Park started to host an annual series of IHEEM-led ‘Post experience courses in the development of management effectiveness’ (‘Early engineers’ lot was not an easy one’, HEJ – April 2018). This collaborative approach is something that continues to this day, whether through focused industry seminars at Eastwood Park, or attending IHEEM-run events, including the annual Healthcare Estates Conference & Exhibition (where you can find Eastwood Park on stand E18 this year).
The Eastwood Park dining room, ‘then and now’.
Electronics appreciation – the first course delivered at Eastwood Park in 1969.
An old postcard of the then Hospital Engineering Centre.
The Eastwood Terrace in the 1960s.
By the early 1980s, a range of courses meeting the needs of NHS engineers and estates and facilities teams had been introduced, and the centre was renamed as ‘the Hospital Estate Management and Engineering Centre’ (HEMEC). Following a review by the DHSS, 1985 saw Eastwood Park officially became part of the NHS Training Authority (NHSTA), where it remained until 1991, when the NHSTA became the NHS Training Directory as a result of the creation of Health Authorities across the country, and ‘arms-length’ agencies.
Remembering his early days This was not the last time that ownership would change hands though, and in 1992 Avon and Gloucestershire College of Health assumed management, renaming the centre the Eastwood Park NHS Training & Conference Centre. Despite further changes ahead, Eastwood Park is the name that would eventually stick, remaining in use right up until the present. Peter Handforth has worked with Eastwood Park for over a decade, supporting the delivery and development of its electrical training, alongside his work as an Authorising Engineer. He remembers his early days as an apprentice for the NHS, where he was sent to Eastwood Park for specialist training. He said: “I was very fortunate to be one of the first NHS apprentices during the late 1970s. The apprenticeships provided a very thorough hospital engineering training programme, with all aspects of engineering experience and skills and knowledge training.
“As part of the apprenticeship and after October 2019 Health Estate Journal 53
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160
