HEE and NTW Solutions receive award for Supported Internship Programme at CNTW NHS Trust

Materials Management team from NTW Solutions Procurement Team received a ‘Spotlight Award’ at last week’s Skills Development Network, Commercial Procurement Conference (North East and Yorkshire & Humber) for their commitment to supporting Project Choice over the past 5 years.

The Spotlight Award was a new award created this year as a result of the Teams work supporting young people with disabilities to find paid employment.

Project Choice is an NHS Health England initiative that offers tailored educational support, and a supported internship course for young adults aged 16-24 with learning difficulties and/or disabilities, and/ or Autism. Project Choice have been working with the Materials Management team for over 5 years and have supported 9 Interns.

100% of the Interns have gone on to successfully graduate from the programme. 5 of the Interns have successfully found paid employment following the scheme.

The team, led by Mark Straker and supported by Sam Parker and Lauren Reader have been mentors to an annual intake of Interns. They have established an internship programme that ensures Project Choice Interns undertake a 3–9-month placement within a busy materials management and wider procurement team. Collectively, the team work with the Project Choice leads to develop a training plan designed to develop the skills of the Interns to learn the essential elements of the materials management role. The programme ensures the Interns learn the purpose of the service, shadow the existing staff, and eventually build up to being given the autonomy to undertake independent working within the department.

The placement is incredibly important in building the confidence of the Interns. For many, it is their first taste of the work environment, and the process has been extremely successful in providing a platform for the Interns to learn the basics of employment (adhering to strict start and finish times, communicating with colleagues, the importance of accurate information, working to deadlines, solving problems etc.  The Interns learn about the different elements of the procurement function, learning the end-to-end materials management systems and processes in great detail. In addition to this they spend some time with the wider procurement team, learning the Oracle system, customer queries goods receipting and supplier management elements.

Project Choice Coordinator Simone Simpson provided the following reference for the team’s efforts over the years.

Mark Straker, Sam Parker and Lauren Reader have been fantastic mentors to our Interns over the past 5 years and have provided them with unwavering support in understanding the role they do and the operations of the team. Each year they personally take it upon themselves to fully immerse themselves in not only completing their greatly important roles in NTW Solutions, but also to provide first class support to the young people in North Tyneside with additional needs.

The panel were so impressed with the work undertaken that they requested the team deliver a ‘showcase’  presentation to all conference attendees. This presentation (led by Project Choice) was extremely well received by colleagues throughout the North Eat and Yorkshire patch, with several organisations approaching Project Choice to express interest in supporting the scheme in the future.

All in all a fantastic achievement for the team and an excellent bit of publicity for NTW Solutions and

We would love to spread the word about the positive impact Project Choice has amongst the procurement community and encourage uptake in other departments and NHS Trusts.