Demonstrating the way ahead
Skills for Health and Department of Health (England) have developed six national demonstrator sites to show how the products and services we are developing can be used on the ground.
These are building a strong track record demonstrating best practice, workforce development tools and underlining the importance of National Occupational Standards.
The idea behind the initiative is to demonstrate use of Skills for Health competences and test them in practice situations. A range of tools are being tested and evaluated by many healthcare organisations, and we are supporting employers with training and awareness workshops around how to use the tools. There are now 2000+ competences available on the Skills for Health website.
South Birmingham primary care trust is acting as a demonstrator site to develop competences for the role of the community support nurse. This is a new role in school nursing and provides services to vulnerable children. Eighteen competences have been mapped to the new role enabling managers to help identify the skills needed. Early feedback has been extremely positive, with favourable reactions to the way that competences allow healthcare managers to search for the best person for the role.
Feedback from the Whittington Hospital trust in London, another Skills for Health demonstrator site, has also been very positive . Competences were used to design a job profile for a therapy assistant role. Healthcare leads have appreciated the flexibility of a competence based approach to role design, with the work leading to development of a training programme.
Our work around demonstration sites also encompasses profiling innovative ways of learning in England and Wales through our Higher Education demonstrator sites. This major piece of research centres on employers and HEIs working together to evaluate learning provision and how they can better support new roles.
See the next edition of Skills for Health News for an update on demonstrator sites. For more information on the competences database see the competence pages .
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