Overview

Enabling Workforce Transformation in General Practice’ was hosted by Health Education North West at The Place Aparthotel, Manchester on 5 February 2015. A total of three sub-regional events were held, with additional events in Preston and Manchester. Each event was attended by healthcare professionals, including practice managers and general practitioners.Transformation of the workforce is an essential component of Health Education England’s vision. In the North West this means “Developing a workforce responsive to changes in care, now and in the future”.

The Workforce Development Fund (WDF) is a funding stream from the Department of Health disseminated by Skills for Care. It focuses on the achievement of qualification units and supports the ongoing professional development of staffacross the adult social care sector.For employers, accessing WDF significantly contributes towards the costs of workers’ completing units and qualifications on the Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF). It can also be used to help fund the delivery of intermediate and advanced level Apprenticeships in social care.

This overview provides links and general information on key sources of NHS workforce information.If you would like to suggest additional sources of workforce related information please contact us.General Enquiries eWIN@yh.hee.nhs.uk; or Tel: 0113 394 7984 Debbie Bottomley 

The Psychological Professions Network (PPN North West) is a new multi-professional network established with the support of Health Education North West (HENW) in collaboration with the Centre for Professional Workforce Development (CPWD).The network brings together a wide range of psychological practitioners from across the region including; psychologists, counsellors, psychotherapists, clinical academics, trainers and trainees, and the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) workforce including psychological wellbeing practitioners and high intensity cognitive behaviour therapist

The Community Pharmacy Competence group supports staff working in community sectors of pharmacy across the North West. The group was set up in 2013 and is responsible for taking forward work to enable community pharmacists to complete Declarations of Competence (DoCs), in order to deliver locally commissioned services.

According to the Social Enterprise organisation, a social enterprise is “a business that trades for a social and/or environmental purpose. It will have a clear sense of its ‘social mission’: which means it will know what difference it is trying to make, who it aims to help, and how it plans to do it. It will bring in most or all of its income through selling goods or services.

The recent reports of both Francis (2013) and Cavendish (2013) set out a requirement to develop training and educational pathways for all health care assistants and support staff. A code of conduct for support staff has also been developed by Skills for Health and Skills for Care (March 2013) and the Government have included support staff development as one of 11 national priority projects in their mandate to Health Education England (DOH 2013) and Talent to Care (2013).Support workers make up around a third of the caring workforce and often spend more time with service users than nurses.

An internal, formal mediation scheme was set up in January 2014 within Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust. Mediation within the Trust is a voluntary process that supports people in resolving workplace disagreements in a way that is fair and agreed by both parties. The mediator works with people to help them find a solution and reach an agreement about how best to proceed to tackle the situation.

NHS Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), general practices and the University of Cumbria are working in partnership with the North West Placement Development Network (NWPDN) to develop and increase primary care placement opportunities for pre-registration nursing students, trainee assistant practitioners and nursing cadets.

The North West LETB, Health Education North West (HENW), identified the need to investigate the requirements of primary care in respect of workforce development, starting with GP Practices. As such the LETB has launched a Primary Care Intelligence and Demand Project (running from 2013 until 2015). This project sits under a wider remit of work, within the Integrated Workforce unit.The Integrated Workforce Unit (IWU) has been developed by HENW in response to the changing organisational landscape and context in order to maximise the use of resources across a number of current work streams.