Yorkshire and the Humber
About the region
The region has a population of more than 5 million and includes the city of Leeds, the second largest legal and financial centre outside London and the third largest city in England by population size.
By 2016 it is estimated that the NHS in the region will need to replace approximately 60% of the professionally qualified clinical staff e.g. nurses, physiotherapists; 63% of clinical support staff and 59% of NHS infrastructure staff including admin and clerical managers.
These figures represent a significant opportunity for the region to reshape the workforce.
The Joint Investment Framework is implemented in Yorkshire and the Humber Strategic Health Authority via the Strategic Alliance. It plans to incorporate GP and Dental Practitioner services to ensure that £5 million matched funding from the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and NHS is allocated to upskilling the workforce in bands 1-4 across the Agenda for Change (AFC) spectrum.
The South Yorkshire Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) is leading the way in implementation of the new standards with a recently developed Employer Forum to ensure that employers can directly influence the provision of vocational courses.
Projects
Skills for Health currently funds four projects in Yorkshire and the Humber which reflect the diversity of our functions in re-designing the workforce:
- Clinical Care Champion in Airedale Trust to ensure that elderly care competences are applied across the care spectrum and not merely confined to the elderly care wards
- Clinical Dental Technology course which will utilise Skills for Health competences in developing Clinical Dental Technologists to undertake functions previously undertaken by a dentist, this work is being undertaken with Sheffield University and is the first in the UK
- A project with the Strategic Health Authorities (SHA) in Yorkshire and the Humber to redesign school health services. It seeks to ensure that care packages for clients are delivered around needs based assessment rather than determined by the profession to which the practitioner belongs
- A project with Leeds Teaching Hospital to upskill support workers to undertake tasks in the operating theatre previously undertaken by nurses.
Sector Skills Agreement
We are currently working on individual action plans for our Sector Skills Agreement with our key partners. We already have draft action plans in place with:
- Union Learn
- Royal College of Nursing
- Regional LSC
- Further Education Colleges in the Region
- Yorkshire Universities
- Regional Development AGENCY Yorkshire Forward.
An employers event will be held in October to ratify the contents of the action plans and to allocate actions to sub regional groups.
A major piece of work we are undertaking involves following a patient pathway identified by our SHA as one of their priorities. By mapping long term Conditions Management, we can determine points throughout this pathway where Skills for Health could have an impact.
Key facts
- In comparison to the other regions in England, the healthcare sector in Yorkshire and the Humber has the highest proportion of healthcare establishments reporting: vacancies, hard to fill vacancies, skill shortage vacancies and internal skill gaps
- More than 60% of the health workforce are qualified to level 3 and above
- There are 11 Higher Education Institutions in the region which equates to 8% of the England provision.
Labour Market Intelligence
To read the full Labour Market Intelligence report on the region
click here.