Approved earlier this year with a £1.4million investment from Health Education England, the LEAP strategy aims to grow and train our people, working together differently to transform the way we deliver local, regional and national workforce priorities promoting a supportive education culture for the entire workforce.
The vision is to create a healthier Humber, Coast and Vale, where every learner has the opportunity, the support, and the infrastructure to thrive in their chosen health or care career.
The LEAP programme is fundamentally about delivering a better future for the population of Humber, Coast and Vale, through retaining more qualified and skilled health and care professionals; creating better experiences for our learners and partner organisations; and better choices for learners by promoting true equality among roles in health and care.
We’re doing this because we believe it’s the right thing to do, that equality, ownership, and a sense of belonging are important aspects for every good learning experience. And we seek to achieve our aims by doing things right; by facilitating effective collaboration between partners resulting in a more agile, informed local system; and by helping learners and providers to be adequately prepared to make the most out of clinical placements.
The first approved projects are now underway. The Evaluator-Appraiser-Student-Integrated (EASI) model for Allied Health Professions (AHPs) is a good example of a HEE Clinical Placement Expansion Programme. With high importance on protecting and supporting the workforce to enhance staff experience; Lucy Aldrich, Physiotherapist and Project Lead, developed the model and tested it with student placements in practice. The model demonstrated reduced stress for Clinical Educators, whilst also increasing the number of students on clinical placement.
Addressing the ongoing problem of administering student placement allocation with providers, an investment of £180k was made to install ARC placement allocation software at the University of York, the University of Hull, and York St John University. Moving from a largely paper-based system, the software will speed up the allocation process, better matching students to the right learning environment with earlier notification of placement arrangements. This has now gone live in two of the Universities so far, resulting in big gains for a relatively small investment.
Other LEAP funded pilots build on exciting Digital Learning innovation developed by Rachel Radford, a Speech and Language Therapist (Rotherham General Hospital). Students have been accessing clinically relevant learning via MS Teams, including peer supervision, reflective practice and practice related projects; Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust reported significant placement expansion after testing a similar approach and Yorkshire Health Partners have capital funding to trial this approach in Primary Care.
The LEAP Programme offers a one-year strategy creating a climate for change by accelerating the delivery of short-term goals that achieve results. Our aim is to create a sustainable, high-quality, clinical placement circuit, that develops Assessors, Supervisors and Academic Educators and increases placement learning opportunities.
In addition, a new 2021/22 Health Education England CPEP fund has been announced. The HEE North East and Yorkshire share of this national allocation is £2.1 million which must be used to support the delivery of key objectives aligned to their North East & Yorkshire Regional Learning Environment Strategy. Bids closed for this at the end of September, so we are really looking forward to seeing what innovative ideas come through as LEAP goes from strength to strength.
Whilst we start to mobilise all our other approved LEAP projects, we still want to hear from any organisation who can host a student studying for a health or care/social care qualification. If you have a student placement expansion idea, however big or small, we want to hear from you! So, if you want to test a bright idea out or find out more about the pilots outlined above, please contact hyp-tr.hcvleapproject@nhs.net