Widening access to nursing careers

In her blog, Sam Donohue, Senior Nursing Policy Manager, talks about the opportunities for nursing apprenticeships in the NHS.

The NHS has successfully increased the numbers of apprenticeships delivered over the last few years (in fact, some 14,660 apprentices started their careers in the NHS in 2014/5).

Our Talent for Care colleagues at HEE have been instrumental in developing greater understanding of the worth of apprentices to employers.  

Apprenticeships can provide a vocational career framework for care assistants and a central element of the Shape of Caring is about valuing the role of the care assistant, which includes providing development and educational opportunities ranging from undertaking the Care Certificate to a Level 3 Apprenticeship Framework in Health.

The apprentice movement in the NHS has high-level governmental support. Indeed, as part of this year's National Apprenticeship Week, health minister Ben Gummer invited colleagues from HEE, as well as NHS apprentices and their employers, to a workshop to discuss the department’s vision of aspirational apprenticeship programmes that provide entry into a broad spectrum of careers in the NHS.

Nursing degree apprenticeship

A key theme within Shape of Caring is widening access into nursing for those who wish to pursue a career in the profession. Lisa Bayliss-Pratt, Director of Nursing and Deputy Director of Education and Quality, is co-chair of the Nursing Degree Trailblazer group, alongside Terry Tucker, a Director for Hallmark Care Homes. The group had previously paused the development of the nursing degree apprenticeship but Lisa and Terry have called for the work to re-ignite and we have had an extremely successful conversation with Jackie Smith the Chief Executive of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) and colleagues from the Department of Health and the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills to outline the key challenges and discuss how these may be overcome.

Within the Shape of Caring team at HEE we need to ensure that both the development of the new nursing role, pending on the result of the recent consultation, and the development of the Nursing Degree Apprenticeship are underpinned by the necessary drive to ensure any new developments have patient safety and public confidence at their core.

To this end we have asked Lord Willis of Knaresborough to convene an oversight group that will provide oversight for both developments.

We envisage that the membership of this Oversight group will evolve as workstreams develop, but we were really pleased to see key members such as the NMC, the Department of Health and the Department of Business, Innovations and Skills, NHS Employers, NHS England, NHS Improvement, representatives from the Shelford Group, Care England, the 157 Group and the Trailblazers in Health chairs attended the first meeting at Millbank in late February. There is a tangible appetite to engage with the agenda and consider how we can progress this work.

Flexible entry to degree programmes

As part of the widening access into nursing and developing flexible pathway theme I visited Plymouth University earlier this year. The visit involved a meeting with the University Executive Dean Professor Patricia Livesey, her colleagues from the Faculty of Health and Human Sciences, Trust Partners and colleagues from one of their partner further education colleges to discuss how they provide flexible entry points into their undergraduate programmes. It was a great example of tripartite working across higher education, further education and health and care that directly benefits the student and local community. We are really pleased that Professor Livesey has agreed to join the Oversight group.