Skills Escalator for Healthcare

"Improving the skills of NHS staff in Leicestershire and Rutland"

The project promotes working and learning and is a means to encourage entry into the NHS, improve the skills of existing staff, widen access to career opportunities and improve service to patients.

Organisation: Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland Workforce Development Confederation

Completion Date: 28/02/2005

Location

Enderby, Leicester

Project Description

The Skills Escalator Project aims to produce a graphical representation of the Skills Escalator within Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland showing career and learning routes to support recruitment and retention in the NHS - Chris Lawson, Project Lead, Skills Escalator

Background
The NHS Plan (2000) set out a vision of a modernised NHS, redesigned around the patient's journey, to radically improve the patient's experience. The opportunity for all staff to learn and develop is a crucial factor in achieving this goal.

The Skills Escalator is the structure by which the NHS will enable all levels of the workforce to acquire new skills and invest in professional development. Staff are encouraged through a strategy of lifelong learning to constantly renew and extend their skills and knowledge giving them greater influence over their careers.

The Skills Escalator is also about attracting a wider range of people to work within the NHS. This offers the dual benefit of growing the NHS workforce whilst also tackling problems of longer-term unemployment and social exclusion, which have such a high correlation with poor health.

What we hope to achieve
The aim of the Skills Escalator project is to develop and promote a graphical model of the Skills Escalator within Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland showing career and learning routes within the local NHS to support recruitment and retention of staff.

The project is underpinned by the Workforce Development Confederation's principles of:

• 'Growing our own' wherever possible from our own community;
• Providing a coherent view of healthcare opportunities;
• Increasing skills level to meet our needs.

Partnership working is key to the success of the project, our partners include:

External Agencies:

• Connexions
• GAIN Leicestershire
• Job Centre Plus
• Leicestershire Learning Partnership
• Learning and Skills Council
• Learning providers
• Local Social Services departments
• Surestart

NHS Organisations:

• University Hospitals of Leicester
• Local Primary Care Trusts
• Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust
• Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland Strategic Health Authority
• National Health Service University (NHSU)
• Other Workforce Development Confederations

Outcomes

The Skills Escalator project will:

Improve job possibilities

• Produce and promote a Skills Escalator model for Leicestershire and Rutland using a range of media (Internet, newsletters, CD-ROM) to represent graphically career entry-points and progression routes;
• Increase awareness of the opportunities and possibilities of employment and skills development within local healthcare in order to improve the skills level of our local community and begin to address some of the recruitment problems within healthcare;

Information and advice

• Improve information, advice and guidance for careers in local healthcare, and to ensure access to labour market information for intermediaries, employers and individuals;
• Demonstrate clearly where staff shortages exist to encourage entry at those specific points;
• Share this 'map' with all those involved in advising the local community on job and career opportunities especially those from disadvantaged groups, asylum seekers and carers and users of health services.

Project Contacts

Project Manager:
Chris Lawson
Tel: 0116 295 7562
E-mail: christopher.lawson@lnrwdc.nhs.uk
Website: www.lnrwdc.nhs.uk
Address: 4 Smith Way, Grove Park, Enderby, Leicester LE19 1SS

LSEP Contact:
Phil Durban
E-mail: phild@lsep.co.uk
Website: www.lsep.co.uk