There are Leadership and Management apprenticeship programmes for every level - First Line Managers to Senior Leaders. 

Check out what's on offer for you here

This is a space for you to talk about what matters to you about working in health and social care.
We want to hear your ideas on 5 main areas to make things better for people working in health and care. Your comments will feed into the development of the long term plan for the NHS and the Social Care Green Paper. 
This is a public site so other people will be able to see your comments and respond to them. Ministers and staff from the Department of Health and Social Care will get involved in the conversation too. 
Find out more and start sharing your ideas. 
You can choose to be anonymous on this platform by ensuring the information you provide in the sign-up process does not identify you.

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.

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

This year Fab Change Day is changing. A natural evolution into something rather special, #FabChangeWeek from Monday 13th to Friday 17th November 2017. A real opportunity to showcase long lasting change coming from the collective commitment of frontline staff in health and social care settings.
We know we can’t do it alone. We need people like you!
There are so many ways you can take part irrelevant of where you are within your organisation. Don’t ever think you can’t make a change happen… the power for change and transformation lies within each and every one of us.

Read more here

The values of the NMC Code should be at the centre of all nursing and midwifery practice. The new guide, Enabling professionalism in nursing and midwifery practice sets out what professionalism should look like, on an every day basis and identifies key principles for employers  to consider when providing supportive practice environments.

Enabling professionalism
The professionalism of the nursing workforce is crucial in the provision of safe and effective patient care. 
The new guide describes how important supportive environments for nurses and midwives are when supporting professional practice, encouraging positive behaviours and instilling confidence in the profession to raise concerns that could compromise safety, quality and experience.
Environments that support and encourage professional practice should:

• Recognise and encourage nursing and midwifery leadership
• Encourage autonomous and innovative nursing and midwifery practice
• Enable inter professional collaboration
• Enable practice learning and development 
• Provide appropriate resources

Share the guide with your nurses and midwives and download your copy from the NMC website. 

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has updated its revalidation standards and guidance in line with a planned review and stakeholder feedback.

Key changesAll documents except the Code have been revised. The standards and guidance includes:

• New examples of circumstances which would not count towards practice hours, i.e. work as a healthcare assistant or placements undertaken as part of a shortened midwifery training course.
  
• Changes in How to revalidate and the guidance sheet to explain why the reflective discussion partner must be a registrant and why the discussion must be a single discussion with one other person.
• Changes to the continuing professional development (CPD) examples to clarify that CPD is separate and different from everyday learning. Coaching and mentoring counts when it involves a specific skill. Group meetings should be outside of everyday practice.
• An explanation on how confirmation differs from appraisal, and clarification that confirmation is not an assessment against the requirements of the registrants current/former employment.
• Amendments to the alternative support arrangements guidance sheet to explain that applications for exceptional circumstances, due to lack of time, will not generally be accepted if nurses and midwives have been practising for more than six months since the guidance was launched. Registrants are expected to meet the requirements in a timely manner, on an on going basis.
  
• Clarification that where applicants declare they are not able to meet the revalidation requirements due to health reasons, their application may be referred to the assistant registrar for consideration in line with NMC guidance on health and character.

Further information 
To find out more about revalidation, please visit our revalidation for nurses and midwives section of the website.  Download the revised guidance documents

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. .