Solving challenges with recruitment, retention and training of North Wales’ social care and health workers.
Background
The North Wales Collaboration Team received funding from the Welsh Government for the project. Practice Solutions in partnership with Imogen Blood & Associates were commissioned to deliver the project between April 2020 and March 2021. The project was overseen by the North Wales Workforce Board and reported to the Regional Partnership Board. The primary objectives were to better understand and develop alternative solutions to recruitment and retention challenges within the region’s health and social care workforce.
What we did
The following flow-chart shows the process by which the model has been developed over the duration of the project.
The Model – Not for profit employment business
A not-for-profit, real living wage accredited employment business with multi-stakeholder governance, which supplies staff and other services to add value to the social care and health care sector in North Wales. In so doing, it offers both:
- Greater consistency, quality, oversight and governance than the current fragmented market of commercial staff supply agencies; and
- Complements existing initiatives to grow the region’s workforce, by matching new workers entering the sector with local providers in a way that maximises retention, and creating career progression pathways into care and health.
Locality Structure
A recurring theme from engagement throughout the project has been the need for a model which can flex to local needs and assets, whilst helping to recruit and retain staff within the locality – workers who understand the culture and speak Welsh. The locality team is therefore key to the proposed model.
Proposed structure of the locality team
The core team would be permanent salaried staff providing cover across a range of care and healthcare settings in the locality, charging its customers a fair but commercial rate for this service. Value for money is high, since they are experienced, multi-skilled workers, who get to know organisations in the locality; and are then well-placed to assist in the matching and introducing new entrants to the sector into vacancies, via the bank.
The bank staff provide cover to independent and statutory sector employers, either where the core team is not able to and/or for the purpose of testing out compatibility/introduce new staff in care settings.
Next steps:
- A report and Business Case will be sent to Welsh Government outlining the work undertaken and proposed model.
- Locally there will be engagement with a range of providers to establish the viability of the model relating to their services.
- Identify areas to pilot the model with interest having been shown by Wrexham and Flintshire, Conwy and Denbighshire.
For further information about this project, please contact:
Carol Dale, Workforce Project Manager, North Wales Social Care and Well-being Services Improvement Collaborative
