Empowering Care Staff with New Skills
Empowering care staff with new skills through training and development.
Empowering Care Staff with new skills
Themes: Developing the Workforce
Cohort: 7
Project Title
Empowing care staff with new skills.
Aim
Cohort 7 identified training need for care staff to empower them with new skills through the creation of a training resource booklet.
Description of the Intervention
Following a series of exploratory "blue sky thinking" sessions, Cohort 7 identified workforce development and access to training opportunities as a priority area for quality improvement. Discussions highlighted concerns regarding perceptions of care home and domiciliary care staff as being less skilled than colleagues working within Health and Social Care Trust services, alongside perceived inequalities in access to education, training and professional development opportunities.
Further exploration identified a strong relationship between staff development opportunities, job satisfaction and workforce retention, aligning with wider workforce challenges being discussed across the health and social care sector. The cohort recognised that many staff members, particularly healthcare assistants and domiciliary care workers, were often unaware of the breadth of learning and career development opportunities available to them.
The aim of the project was therefore to improve access to information about education, training and career development opportunities by creating a practical and accessible resource for the workforce. The project resulted in the development of the"Developing Me" booklet, a resource designed to support staff in identifying opportunities for professional development, career progression and specialist learning pathways.
Changes Implemented
The cohort worked collaboratively to identify, gather and organise information relating to education, training and career development opportunities available across Northern Ireland. This information was brought together into an easy-to-use A5 booklet aimed primarily at healthcare assistants and domiciliary care staff, while remaining relevant to registered nurses and other health and social care professionals.
The Developing Me booklet provided a single resource containing information on:
- Professional development opportunities through organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), UNISON, HSC Clinical Education Centre and Northern Ireland Social Care Council (NISCC).
- Access to vocational qualifications, apprenticeships, management qualifications and workplace-based development programmes.
- Specialist learning opportunities provided by charitable organisations, including dementia care, palliative care, neurological conditions and disability awareness training.
- Further education and university pathways, including routes into nursing and wider health and social care careers.
- Sources of support for developing specialist interests, becoming champions within practice areas and progressing into leadership and management roles.
The booklet was developed as a practical workforce development tool to increase awareness of opportunities, support career progression and encourage lifelong learning within the care sector.
