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The National Allied Health Professionals Workforce Supply Project
Did you know that Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) are the third largest workforce in the NHS?
AHPs play an integral role in delivering safe and effective care for service users across health and care settings, which is why between 2021-2022 HEE funded resource across 207 NHS provider organisations that were dedicated to the supply of their multi-professional AHP workforce.
The National AHP Workforce Supply Project
As a result of the project, these 207 NHS provider organisations across England now have visibility over their AHP workforce. Funding has created 207 upskilled multi-professional workforce leaders who are ready to become leaders across all levels of our health and social care system.
NHS provider organisations across England now have a better understanding and more accurate data on their Electronic Staff Records (ESR) system of their AHP workforce.
Some of the high impacted interventions that have been adopted nationally as a result of the project are:
- Improved international recruitment pathways
- Improved return to practice pathways
- More rotational posts
- Pre-registration apprenticeships
- More jobs for new graduates/registrants
More than 85 support workforce project lead roles have been created in NHS trusts to implement the AHP Support Worker Competency, Education, and Career Development Framework; providing leadership opportunities and stimulating engagement with this valuable workforce for sustainable transformation.
As a result of having dedicated resource for AHP apprenticeships within NHS provider organisations, we now have 1263 apprentices planned to start pre-registration AHP apprenticeship courses in the 2022 and 2023 academic years.
We had a target of growing our paramedic student numbers by 3000. As a result of clinical placement expansion efforts, we anticipate being able to accommodate 3,522 students on placements in the 2022/23 academic year. This is a first for us and we are committed to supporting these students to transition successfully into the registered workforce.
This project has enabled NHS provider organisations to have control over resources that will help them offer more practice learning placements to pre-registration learners sustainably.
We spoke to some of the teams involved
Read our case studies
We spoke to a handful of teams and individuals across the country read what they had to say on our case studies page.
Meet Suhailah Mohamed
A former Clinical Fellow working in the National HEE AHP Team, shared with us her thoughts on leading the delivery of the project:
Being a clinical fellow with HEE’s national AHP team has been transformational and a significant catalyst in my career. It has been a joyous challenge to have led the delivery of a national project aimed at growing the AHP workforce as defined in the 2019 NHS Long Term Plan. It’s been a privilege to have learnt from and grown with NHS and system leaders who are clearly committed to improving the health of our populations. The impact of the National AHP Workforce Supply Project is a testament to the power of Allied Health Professionals - the third largest workforce in the NHS. Their ability to collaborate, remain solution focussed, deploy resources creatively and work in a person-centred way is what has resulted in the rippling positive outcomes we are seeing today."