About the region
Yorkshire and Humberside is a diverse region with many strengths and outstanding potential. The region is the fifth largest in England for area, with a population of more than 5 million. Leeds is the second largest legal and financial centre outside London and the third largest city in England when measured by population size.
The Region employs 9% of the entire UK health workforce. The NHS is one of Yorkshire and Humberside’s largest employers. 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 Humberside 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 4 projects in Yorkshire and Humberside 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 Humberside 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.
Labour Market Intelligence report to follow shortly.
