Dear Colleagues

RE: Advance Care Planning Training Opportunity
I am writing to you to ask for your support within your organisation to promote staff attending a one-day Advance Care Planning (ACP) Training Course.
I know you will appreciate how important it is for patients to have the opportunity to
document their future wishes and preferences at end of life to aim for a prepared and planned death. Therefore, a group of specialist palliative care education centres in the North West of England joined together to form a regional network, The North West Coast Learning Collaborative (NWCLC) to design, deliver and quality assure a high-quality ACP programme for delivery across their localities. The NWCLC was successful in bidding for project funding from a partnership between Health Education England (working across the North West) Greater Manchester and Eastern Cheshire Strategic Clinical Networks and the North West Coast Strategic Clinical Networks.
This well evaluated programme has now already been delivered to range of frontline staff. The programme has also supported the development of Facilitators who have been trained to prepare and deliver the programme. This free programme is particularly aimed at frontline staff from health, social and voluntary sectors. I would be grateful if you could promote this training within your organisation by sharing this letter to your relevant colleagues. Details about how to book on a session: North West Coast here and Greater Manchester here.
Evaluations from Staff who have already undertaken the training have indicated that it was "a wonderful, informative day. Really makes you think about your practice and evaluate how you do things" and "Fantastic session, very educational and enjoyable. I will be recommending to colleagues. Thank you".
We do hope that your colleagues and organisation can benefit from this helpful development. Yours sincerely,
Dr Michael Farrell, Head of Education Transformation - North, Health Education England

How to book your place

We are facilitating the Advance Care Planning study day at Queenscourt on the following dates:

• 7 June
  
• 11 July
  
• 8 August
• 13 September
  
• 15 October
• 18 November
• 6 December

9.30am – 4.30pm, lunch and refreshments are provided
Please complete and return the attached booking form to apply for a place

Click here for the Booking Form

Today Health Education England (HEE) has published Facing the Facts, Shaping the Future – a health and care workforce strategy for England to 2027. Attached you will find our on the day briefing summarising the key announcements.
 
This is a draft version of the workforce strategy and is now open for consultation until Friday 23 March 2018. Regional meetings and webinars will be offered by HEE among other ways to contribute. We will submit a formal response and will engage with you on this in the New Year. The final version of the strategy will then be published in July 2018.
 
In the meantime, if you have any initial views on the draft strategy or on the questions that HEE plans to consult on, please do get in touch as we would be very happy to receive your input. To share your views please contact Paul Myatt, policy advisor (workforce) Paul.Myatt@nhsproviders.org. Alternatively you can respond directly to: consultation.hee.nhs.uk.  

Health Education England has unveiled its plan to ensure the NHS can recruit, train and retain the necessary staff to deliver improvements for people affected by cancer over the next three years.

Read more here

The Department of Health is currently running a 12-week consultation which will result in the biggest reform of the professional regulatory system across health and social care.

The proposals in the consultation Promoting professionalism, reforming regulation could affect how employers determine the suitability and fitness to practise of healthcare professionals in their workforce.

The proposals which will impact employers include:

• Streamlining of the regulatory system to make it easier for employers, who often need to interact with numerous different bodies responsible for regulation, to navigate
• Reduction in the number of healthcare professionals that fall under statutory regulation
• Having a consistent set of standards which are underpinned by profession specific codes so that individuals are managed in a consistent and supportive manner
• Changing how fitness to practise procedures are carried out to ensure greater interaction with registrants early on to ensure issues are dealt with in a proportionate and responsive way
• Developing a flexible workforce that is more responsive in meeting the challenges in delivering healthcare in the future
  

How to have your say
It is important that this consultation helps develop a modern system of healthcare regulation which can meet the demands of a rapidly changing health and social care landscape.
NHS Employers will be preparing a collective response to the consultation on behalf of employers. If you would like your feedback to be considered for inclusion in our response, you can respond in either of the following ways:

• by completing our online survey
• by emailing us at regulation@nhsemployers.org

All responses must be received by close of play on 12 January 2018.

We would be interested to hear your views on what works in the current system, what are the challenges and whether the proposals outlined in the consultation paper will address some of these issues. If not, what other considerations do you think should be taken into account?

We would also urge employers to provide feedback directly to the Department of Health by 23 January 2018.

A new national framework that sets out and defines the role of advanced clinical practitioners (ACPs) has been launched by Health Education England (HEE), in partnership with NHS Improvement and NHS England.

Drawing on existing practice, the new framework has been developed to ensure that there is consistency about what advanced level practice is. It includes the requirements for entry into the role, and defines the core capabilities with a recommended standard of education. This not only gives clarity to current and future ACPs, but also for other healthcare staff, employers and patients.

ACPs support existing and more established roles within multi-professional teams, and can help to provide and improve clinical continuity and access to high-quality care for patients. HEE expect the new resource will help to transform and promote team working across traditional professional boundaries and support the delivery of high quality healthcare for local people. 

The National Framework for Multi-Professional Advanced Clinical Practice is available to download. 

You can read more about Advanced Clinical Practice on our website.

HEE's workforce Star tool was launched at the Health and Care Innovation Expo 2017. The tool helps provide a simple framework to guide local conversations and help systems define their workforce transformation requirements. It is also a 'go to' directory of workforce transformation solutions including tools, training materials and case studies.
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http://www.ewin.nhs.uk/tools_and_resources/health-education-england-hee-star-tool-launched

Details have been released by Health Education England (HEE) regarding the arrangements for funding additional clinical placements in nursing, midwifery and allied health pre-registration education.
Following a government announcement in which it committed to fund an additional 10,000 clinical placements by 2020, HEE has now written to higher education institutions with the detail of how the money will be allocated. 

The placements will give universities flexibility to deliver extra places for students across a range of roles and includes an additional 1,500 places for courses starting from 1 August 2017.
For more details about the announcement, please visit HEE

Health Education England (HEE) has launched a new report looking at the mental health workforce plan for England Stepping Forward to 2020/21: the mental health workforce plan for England.
This report has been developed to support the delivery of the Five Year Forward View for mental health, which sets out the improvements needed in mental health services by 2020/21. 
Stepping Forward to 2020/21: the mental health workforce plan for England sets out a high level road map and reflects the additional staff required to deliver this transformation. It provides a summary of the shape of the current workforce, including vacancy rates, recommendations for mental health providers in thinking about their workforce pipeline, and recommendations for arm’s length bodies and the wider NHS to identify the best skill mix to deliver evidence-based care in the optimal way. Broadening the traditional workforce and using a comprehensive skills mix will enable the NHS to fulfill the plan and the wider strategy. 
The report shows how nurses, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, peer support workers and other professionals can help deliver the care needed. It highlights that the NHS will establish 21,000 posts and hire 19,000 additional members of staff by 2020. 11,000 of these will be from the traditional pools of professionally regulated staff. In addition, there will be 8,000 people recruited into new roles such as peer support workers, personal wellbeing practitioners, call handlers, or nursing associates.
This report follows the same ambitions as the recent report by the Nuffield Trust, Reshaping the workforce to deliver the care patients need, commissioned by NHS Employers, which emphasised the value of and the need for new and extended roles in the NHS workforce.
Learn more about the report on the HEE website.
You can find good practice and more information about reshaping the workforce on our new reshaping the non-medical workforce webpages.

NMC agrees to regulate new nursing associate role

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has formally agreed to a request from the Department of Health to be the regulator for the new nursing associate role.

Jackie Smith, NMC Chief Executive and Registrar of the NMC said: “After a thoughtful and thorough discussion, the NMC’s Council has agreed to a request from the Department of Health to be the regulator for the new nursing associate role.

“The Council recognised that there is strong support for the regulation of nursing associates and I have always maintained that the public would expect any role with nursing in the title to be regulated."

“As an organisation we are well-equipped to regulate nursing associates and this is a positive endorsement of our progress. We will continue to work closely with stakeholders including the Department of Health and Health Education England to ensure the successful development and implementation of this new role.”

Health Minister Philip Dunne said: “Robust professional regulation is important, so patients can continue to be confident they are receiving high quality care and I am delighted with today’s decision by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

“The introduction of the Nursing Associate role is key to strengthening the future NHS workforce and we look forward to working with them and other key stakeholders to ensure that appropriate safeguards are put in place for this new profession.”