New east of England forum to deliver ‘one workforce’ vision

A new forum focusing on workforce planning and transformation has launched in the east of England (EoE) to provide strategic direction to delivering the vision of our ‘one workforce’ across integrated care systems.   

The EoE integrated workforce planning and transformation strategic forum (IPaT) held its first meeting on 22 February, chaired by Danny Hariram, Chief People and Organisational Development Director at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust.  

Staff are at the centre of a collective ambition for greater integration and better care, and this forum will support the delivery of the NHS People Plan commitments to New ways of working and delivering care (NWoW) and growing for the future (GFF) that underpin successful delivery of service transformation as described in the NHS Long Term Plan.   

The group that includes representation from HEE, NHS England and NHS Improvement, and across the system, will provide a forum where programme and profession workforce plans come together to enable a system-level perspective of workforce transformation and people plan delivery. 

The proposed duties and responsibilities of the forum will include:  

• providing governance and traction to support delivery of the EoE workforce transformation strategy; 

• supporting systems to develop their workforce planning processes so that future plans are integrated with finance and activity plans, and aligned to population health needs; 

• providing a space to check delivery against plans (supply / workforce growth) and discuss mitigating actions at region / system / provider level; 

• discussing whether limited workforce resource is focused to areas of priority and biggest impact; 

• providing a forum where specific workforce programme risks can be escalated for a cross-sector approach to mitigating risk; 

• bringing together efforts of programmes, professions, people directorate to check collective outputs are aligned and delivering; 

• ensuring HEE and NHSE/I mandates are aligned to deliver for systems; and 

• reporting back to the Regional People Board (RPB) on any workforce planning and transformation opportunities or risks through the appointed Chair Danny Hariram and as a sub-group to the RPB. 

For more information contact Saffron Rolph-Wills, Workforce Transformation Manager, EoE: Saffron.Rolph-Wills@hee.nhs.uk