Posted on: 11 June 2020
The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership (WY&H HCP) will embark on an urgent and emergency care nursing associate apprenticeship partnership with the University of Huddersfield after it secured major funding of £100, 000 from Health Education England (HEE) in April 2020. WY&H HCP covers Bradford district and Craven; Calderdale, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield.
WY&H HCP published ‘Delivering Better health and care for everyone: Our five year plan’ in March 2020; where it outlined its workforce ambitions, including addressing the shortage of nursing staff.
For the past four years, since it was established, WY&H HCP has been working to address current and future workforce needs of which the development of apprenticeships for urgent and emergency care nursing associates are an important part.
The University already delivers highly successful apprenticeship courses for the training of nursing associates. This new two-year nursing associate apprenticeship, developed in partnership, will focus on urgent and emergency care with the aim of increasing the workforce to meet local people’s needs.
The qualified nursing associate will be a member of the multidisciplinary health and care team. They will work under the supervision of registered nurses to deliver flexible care across a wide variety of settings.
This ambitious new course will allow candidates to draw on the ethos ‘learning together, working together’, as unique rotational work-based learning will span across health and social care settings including; social care, emergency departments, community settings, primary and community care.
Rob Webster, CEO Lead for WY&H HCP said: ‘We are blessed with a number of excellent universities locally. Our partnership is addressing what the Covid-19 pandemic has further highlighted, the need for continued integration between health and social care. I would urge local CQC-registered employers to find out more about this new apprenticeship that will help to expand the health and care workforce’.
Brendan Brown, CEO for Airedale NHS Foundation Trust and CEO lead for the WY&H HCP Workforce Programme said: ‘Apprenticeship schemes such as this one are extremely valuable because it will enable our people, who have a breadth of experience, who may be nervous of engaging with traditional academic programmes to come forward and use their much needed skills. Apprenticeship routes continue to be critical in attracting and developing people from all backgrounds to the health and care sector, supporting widening participation and our ambition to develop new roles. I’m both delighted and excited by this much needed course and look forward to welcoming new recruits to our workforce’.
The trainee nursing associate course commenced at Huddersfield in 2018 and provides experienced health care workers the opportunity to develop their career in nursing. These roles have been embraced and are contributing very positively to the NHS and healthcare workforce, filling the gap between the qualified registered nurse and support workers.
Professor Paul Bissell, Dean of Human and Health Sciences at the University of Huddersfield said: ’The course has been a tremendous success changing the mould of traditional student life. Learners may come to the course with fewer academic qualifications but their wealth of healthcare experience brings different dimensions to their learning experience. The learning while working apprenticeship model has resulted in many TNAs achieving exceptional standards both in academic achievements but ultimately they are making real differences to the quality of patient care and health outcomes’.
A stakeholder event will take place using digital technology on Monday 29th June, 12 noon – 2pm. This will outline the course, the incentives for employers and the positive benefits for employees across the health and care sector. Partners are particularly keen for any CQC-registered businesses, organisations or agencies providing adult social care or care home providers to join and find out more.
This first cohort of emergency and urgent care nursing associate apprenticeships will be recruited by 14 December 2020, enabling a new course to be launched at the start of 2021.
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