EDUCATION & TRAINING
completion, I was sent to Eastwood Park for specialist electrical, electronics, and lift training. I clearly remember returning from the training with a feeling that I had ‘moved on’ and developed new skills and gained additional specialist knowledge.” He continued: “The roles of tradestaff and engineers have changed considerably since those days, due in part to the changes in technology, increased demand/reliance on the building services, safe working practices, and current standards and legislation. It concerns me now that we are driven by compliance, and yet in many cases we have lost some of the engineering skills and expertise I experienced from colleagues. Many hospitals I work with struggle to fill posts at all levels with appropriately skilled, qualified, and experienced personnel.
A growing passion for teaching “I was sent on lift training and electrical training to further my knowledge and skills. Training now is often to meet compliance requirements. I consider myself fortunate to be able to return to Eastwood Park and deliver electrical training. As an apprentice I never considered teaching, but slowly developed a passion, and took the option of teacher training.
“The training that Eastwood Park offers now has increased, to provide courses on all the specialist healthcare disciplines at many levels, including apprentices. I have a personal passion for providing courses, not just to meet compliance, but equally to increase knowledge, develop and improve skills, and to inspire learning and self-development.”
Since Peter Handforth’s apprentice days, Eastwood Park has been privatised - the fate of many public sector organisations. In 1997 Fujitsu Services (then known as ICL) purchased the Eastwood Park Training & Conference Centre, rebranding it as KnowledgePool, a new education group made up of Amdahl’s Education Unit, ICL’s PERiTAS
Peter Handforth has worked with Eastwood Park for over a decade, supporting the delivery and development of electrical training.
Media unit, and Fujitsu’s Learning Media unit.
2003 saw perhaps the most significant and long-lasting change in the centre’s recent history, as – following a successful management buyout – business ownership passed to Eastwood Park Ltd. Those involved in this venture continue to serve on Eastwood Park’s Board today, led by CEO, John Thatcher, who has been responsible for the facility’s overall direction and activities since 1990. With the opportunity to maximise the potential of a country house, and over 200 acres to maintain, the centre started to attract other events, mainly at weekends when training has finished for the week. Eastwood Park now has a reputation not only as a leading technical training provider, but also as a busy local wedding and events venue. It’s safe to say there aren’t many venues around the country where the maintenance of medical equipment takes place alongside an afternoon tea.
Acquisition of freehold
Eastwood Park Ltd continued to expand, and in 2006 it purchased the freehold of the house and surrounding 200-acre estate. It also began extending its training portfolio worldwide; courses are now delivered in Australasia, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America and throughout Europe. In 2008 new work- based foundation degrees for the healthcare engineering and biomedical market were launched. The degrees have been through a few changes since then, and were relaunched in partnership with Staffordshire University in 2016, but remain central to Eastwood Park’s offering, with 100 students set to graduate by 2020 from over 50 organisations, who will be benefiting from the newly qualified employees. Lisa Slevin, Eastwood Park’s Learning & Development manager, says of the impact that work-based initiatives – which sit alongside Eastwood Park’s ‘regular’ schedule of short training courses – have made in her time with the organisation: “I joined Eastwood Park in 2011 to develop a new approach to work-based learning for the healthcare market following the expiry of NVQs. Since then, I have seen work- based learning transform from delivering purely competence-based programmes, to a much wider range of options, both academic and vocational, from levels 3-6.
Degree programmes ‘unique to the industry’
“For example,” she continues, “most recently I have worked closely on the development and delivery of our specialist degree programmes. These are unique to the industry, and have been developed in line with the NHS Estates and FM Workforce Strategy and professional body feedback, which had identified that ‘generic’ degrees did not adequately cover the context, technologies, specialist services, patient safety issues, and regulations, required in hospitals. Time and time again, Eastwood
Lisa Slevin with Hospital Engineering degree students. 54 Health Estate Journal October 2019
Decontamination trainer, Mark Walker, with delegates.
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