Skills for Health has made significant progress in completing Sector Skills Agreements (SSAs) in each UK country and in the English regions.
National SSAs have been in place in England and Scotland since autumn 2006. The East of England region launched their Agreement in November 2007 and other regional SSAs are progressing well. The Northern Ireland and Wales Agreements will also be published during 2008.
The aim of the Agreements is to support employers in developing their workforce to meet the health and service needs of the local population. At a regional level they are an important way of helping to deliver regional skills priorities with a range of partners.
They provide an important strategic direction for workforce change, helping demonstrate the links between key developments such as sector qualification strategies; the use and application of national workforce competences and learning design; and the commissioning and provision of education and training. For example, the East of England Health SSA was a first for the healthcare sector in the English regions. Over the next three years the region will invest up to £21.2 million to tackle skills shortages and gaps.
In addition to our extensive direct work with employers, the development of all Sector Skills Agreements has relied heavily on Skills for Health's Labour Market Intelligence (LMI) reports. These are now available for all of the English regions and we will have a full suite of reports in place for each UK country in the near future.
We are also creating an online LMI web resource which will bring together data from various organisations and the UK Labour Force Survey. This will enable sector employers, workforce planners and other partners to access health sector specific workforce information in one place.
