Preparation of the Agreement
Throughout the Region, there have been a series of consultation meetings to identify the concerns, thoughts and predicted needs of those individuals involved in frontline healthcare delivery and the educational provision for the predicted service.
Key concerns that have been identified are
- The recruitment of the staff of the right calibre from the trained, available, national workforce is difficult
- Current restrictions on recruitment and reductions in available posts
- Current restrictions on funding available for education and difficulties in obtaining resources
- The changing demographics of the population of the area, the number of elderly are increasing locally, and a greater number of elderly are moving into the area for social reasons than in other areas of the country.
- The use of the skills escalator/skills ladder as a compulsory objective
- The move towards a more multidisciplinary approach of healthcare delivery by individuals could lead to the loss of specialist skills and a general downgrading of the skills of a particular professional group
- Difficulties in engaging, and indeed informing, young people of the benefits and opportunities available alongside a career in healthcare
Key ways to address these issues are:
- Make better use of the local available workforce, by providing top quality, local training, across a variety of educational levels and targeting a variety of groups to recruit from (i.e. young people, returners, career changers) and not focus on one particular group
- Have the suitable number and level of posts to provide the necessary service
- Adequately fund educational and training requirements
- Predict the service requirements for the changing population and look to the provision of the future service, rather than dwell on the requirements of the current service
- Introduce a variety of qualifications with differing degrees of focus on the academic and practical skills associated with professional groups
- Take care that staff are appropriately trained and rewarded for the role that they undertake
- Form closer links with young people of school age, in order to inform and educate them at an early age of the opportunities available to them, in terms of diversity of roles available, benefits, training opportunities and rewards available to those who choose to work in healthcare
