Support worker learning and development roadmap

Purpose of the roadmap

This support worker learning and development roadmap (referred to as "the roadmap" from now on) has been designed to be a useful resource for support workers, educators, clinical leads, managers and HR colleagues.

The roadmap has been developed with input from a broad range of colleagues including Allied Health Professional (AHP) Support Workers, Maternity Support Workers (MSWs) and Healthcare Support Workers (HCSWs), Educators, Line Managers, HR colleagues and Workforce Leads. Contributions were also sought from the HCSW Voice network, Care Certificate Leads network and Educator Community of Practice.

The roadmap has been designed to be used alongside trust specific training and tools.

This roadmap covers five key areas – career progression, wellbeing and resilience, skills for life (functional skills), personal skills and technical skills. You can use the buttons below to explore these areas in more detail.

If you’re a support worker, this resource can support you to identify your learning and development goals and how to improve your skills to deliver the best possible patient care. It brings together sources of information to help you explore your own skills and support you with your ongoing learning and development.

The information in this roadmap can help you to discuss your development and career needs with different people in your organisation.

You might want to discuss these needs with:

• Your line manager or team leader
• Your organisation’s education team
• Your practice/professional development nurse, allied health professional or midwife.

For clinical managers and HR colleagues this resource can be used to assist learning, development, and career conversations with your support worker workforce. These tools can also help support with appraisal conversations and to help develop a response to the staff survey.

Please familiarise yourself with the content and share this resource with colleagues within your organisation. We are keen for this document to become the go to place for support workers, educators and managers when thinking about a learning and development journey. Below are a couple of examples of how the roadmap has been used by educator colleagues:

• “The career progression page is useful for signposting and the technical skills page is excellent”.
• “It has lots of learning programmes for developing personal skills and sites to link in for career progression, which enhances apprenticeship programmes”.
• “The range of resources included is good – especially the RCN information on career paths. It gives a good steer on what the future might look like and how to get there”.
• “The roadmap is really useful as this lays out the step-by-step options and progression points for an individual, along with the support that might be available to them”.
• The L&D Roadmap has been used for: “modules to support learning”, “develop[ing] a competency framework”, “a resource for staff”, “develop[ing] training and staff”, “in our eLearning and skill mix” and “to enhance the Care Certificate delivery”.

For managers and HR colleagues this resource can be used to assist learning, development, and career conversations with your support worker workforce. These tools can also help support with appraisal conversations and to help develop a response to the staff survey.

Please share this resource with colleagues within your organisation. We are keen for this document to become the go to place for support workers, educators and managers when thinking about a learning and development journey.