A new model of clinical supervision for all midwives in England, advocating for education and quality improvement (A-EQUIP), will come into effect on 1 April. NHS England is leading a dedicated week of action between 20 - 24 March to raise awareness of the new model, which will replace the statutory model of supervision. 

The new modelA-EQUIP is a continuous improvement process, designed to build personal and professional resilience among midwives to enhance the quality of care provided for women and their babies. It also aims to help staff prepare for their professional revalidation. The process will be supported by professional midwifery advocates, which are midwives who have undergone training in order to deploy the system to the workforce. 

Operational guidance will be available from 1 April, providing information for the profession, leaders, managers, providers of maternity services, commissioners and higher education institutes. Blogs are available on the NHS England website and you can join the #A-EQUIP conversation on Twitter. 
BackgroundSince 1902, professional development and support for midwives has been provided through statutory supervision. A series of legislative changes has led to the function of local supervising authorities and statutory supervision of midwifery to be removed. 

To develop the new model, NHS England has engaged with a range of key stakeholders across the system and has worked with a number of pilot sites to test and evaluate the process. .

What is Mentoring?
Mentoring is the support and guidance of one individual to another to help with professional development and career goals with the opportunity to develop leadership capacity at all levels. Developing these staff leadership abilities will lead to enhanced innovation and integration of services within organisations; this will benefit patients, service users and the local population. Mentoring is available to a diverse range of employees with cross-organisational, cross-professional and peer mentoring relationships encouraged. The emphasis is on the needs of the individual with mentoring encouraging autonomy and self-development while helping to identify opportunities for future development. These collective improvements in an individual’s performance can lead to increased job satisfaction, while they also help to support the link between an individual’s role and their impact on patient care, benefiting the organisation and the NHS as a whole. 
Read more here

Check out what is on offer currently for our existing staff. Click here to view the apprenticeship page on this website which details all the apprenticeships on offer.
The Trust is currently identifying the process for recruiting new starters on to apprenticeships. Once this is confirmed, we will share the information with our managers and advertise any apprenticeship opportunities via NHS Jobs.

The Trust is committed to supporting the development of its staff. To ensure that staff have the right skills and expertise to deliver quality services, the Trust has a new (CPD) funding application process in place. All staff are required to follow this process and must not book training until prior funding has been approved, unless you are being funded through your departmental budget.

To find out how to apply, please check out the new process and training application form available on the Trust’s Education & Training website here

Places are available on the following courses held over the next two weeks.
To book a place or to find out more, contact Training on ext 6214 or e-mail soh-tr.training@nhs.net 
Click here to view a larger image

What's new?

The amber colour coding message has now changed. You will see:

This change has been made to help you renew your training in a more timely way and make it count!

If you renew your training too soon (two or three months before expiry) the training system cannot pick up your new training episode when the old one expires. You would then continue to show as not meeting your requirement. If you see amber against any of your requirements now you must renew within 1 month. 

If you have any questions or queries about the new reports please contact the training department.

The 2016 NHS Staff Survey results have been announced and show continuing progress despite pressures. 
The survey was sent to 982,000 staff in 316 NHS organisations. 423,000 staff responded, the highest response rate to date.
26 of the key findings measured in the survey improved, three have remained the same, while three have dropped slightly. Some of the key highlights of the survey demonstrate:

• improvement in the overall willingness to recommend the NHS as a place to work or be cared for 
• improvements in areas such as the quality of appraisal, manager support, measures of staff engagement, health and wellbeing and confidence from staff in raising concerns
• levels of staff motivation and the percentage of staff who feel their role makes a difference to patients and service users, have broadly remained the same 
• staff perception on equality of career progression, experience of discrimination and levels of violence against staff have dropped slightly
• progress has been made, but levels of bullying and harassment still remain unacceptably high, the score fell very slightly from 24.8 to 24.1 per cent, while levels of stress fell from 37 to 36.7 per cent.
  

The NHS Staff Survey is recognised as an important way of ensuring that the views of staff working in the NHS inform local improvements and input in to local and national assessments of quality, safety, and delivery of the patient care.
Further informationNHS Staff Survey 2016 results web page provides a more detailed summary of the results. For the full 2016 survey results please visit the NHS Staff Survey website. 

The Working Longer Group (WLG) has launched two new resources to support managers, staff and their representatives with the challenges and opportunities associated with an ageing workforce. 

A resource for managers
This resource will enable managers to find information on what an ageing workforce means for their staff and organisation. The WLG recognises the need to support managers in developing positive age management approaches, to support all workers across the NHS. 

A resource for staff and their representatives
This resource has been developed for NHS staff and their representatives to provide information about the changes to the pension scheme retirement age; and on the anxieties, challenges and opportunities that working to a raised retirement age might present. It also provides signposts to further information and resources. 

Further resources and information from the group is available in the WLG web section. 

University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust (UHMBT) is embracing technology to make it easier for staff to raise concerns by becoming the first NHS Trust in the country to launch a Freedom to Speak Up App.
The Trust launched its Freedom to Speak Up campaign in July 2015 with the appointment of Heather Bruce, Senior Radiographer, as its first Freedom to Speak Up Guardian – one of only a handful in the NHS at that time.
The purpose of this role, which was recommended by the Francis Inquiry, was to help shift the culture of the Trust to one where all staff, volunteers, students and governors feel able to raise any issues or concerns and know that they will be addressed confidentially, swiftly, and in line with good practice.
Since then, Heather has worked hard to make raising concerns as easy as possible for staff, especially clinical staff that do not always have access to emails or a computer. This is where the idea for the Freedom to Speak Up App came from.
The free app allows staff to raise a concern confidentially and from work or home via their phone or tablet.
Heather can then look into the issue and support the member of staff who wishes to speak up ensuring that the concern is escalated and addressed appropriately.
Heather, said: “It is really important that staff not only feel able to raise concerns if they see something that they think isn’t right or that may compromise safe patient care, but that they know they will be listened to and supported by the Trust if they do raise a concern. This is absolutely what we are about at UHMBT and that is why we are thinking of as many ways as possible to make it easier for staff to raise any concerns they may have. The purpose of the App is to give staff another way of speaking up if they want to. Everyone has their phone with them at all times these days and use them to do most things so it seemed a logical next step for us. The App gives staff all the information they need on raising a concern and what to expect next, and although we prefer it if they give us their name so we can feedback to them on the outcome of their concern, they can submit it anonymously if they wish.”
Staff can now download the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play for Android.

Morecambe Freedom to Speak Up by Intec for Business Limited
https://appsto.re/gb/jBObgb.i