Currently a key aspect of the Workforce Consortium’s work is attracting people into health and care careers. Several projects are in place to support this area of work and various system wide projects contribute greatly to the ‘Grow Your Own Workforce’ agenda, which is a key component of the NHS People Plan (2019) and emerging Integrated Care System design framework (2021).
Widening Participation Partnership Group (WPPG) – This group is Humber based and brings together colleagues from schools, colleges, and employing organisations to identify workforce gaps of the future and ensure these careers are actively promoted within schools and colleges to raise aspirations and help fill those gaps with local people. This group is also working with career leaders across the Humber to develop resources for schools and home-educated students so they are able to learn about different health and care careers in a number of different formats throughout Years 7 to 11 at school. A similar group exists in the North Yorkshire area.
Humber, Coast and Vale Ambassador Programme – We have a wide group of employee’s from organisations across the region who are available to talk to school and college students either virtually or face-to-face about their role, routes in and the potential career pathway for that role. Ambassador’s really champion health and care as a career and it’s a great opportunity for students to connect with people actually in a career they may be interested in or they may be inspired entirely by their encounter with an ambassador to consider opportunities they hadn’t previously thought of.
Covid Workforce Retention Project – This project is aimed at people who have volunteered and/or worked as part of the Covid vaccination programme and aims to support them to move onto a more permanent role or undergo training to begin a new career in health and care. Through this project we have held a series of webinars which help people to find jobs, complete applications, write personal statements and prepare for interviews.
Apprenticeships – We regularly reach out to employers, schools and colleges to promote apprenticeships for different levels and abilities in order to help people who need to have an income whilst they study. Apprenticeship’s are for all ages and not just young people therefore it can be a good route in to health and care for a range of people. We have also helped to transfer apprenticeship funding from larger organisations to smaller employers to enable them to increase the number of apprenticeship opportunities they support and create new roles.
We will be launching a new website for the public, in Spring 2022, which will bring together a number of career resources from across the region to make it easier for local people to find information and local work and training opportunities in health and care. The website will be more interactive with resources such as quizzes, case studies, videos and career pathway information to help people find the right health and care career for them.
Over 2022, we will be supporting a number of career events and holding some pop-up events in a variety of venues to support people further. For information about any of these projects, please contact hyp-tr.hcv.workforceconsortium@nhs.net to be directed to the right team member.