Health Education England (HEE) has stated their plans to jointly train health and social care staff, in its response to the Primary Care Workforce Commission report on the future of the NHS workforce.
HEE agreed with the report – titled The future of primary care: creating teams for tomorrow – that joint training of health and social care staff will “increase efficiency across primary care.”
Moreover, the training organisation said that HEE and Skills for Care and Skills for Health have already worked together to develop the Care Certificate, an identified set of standards that applies to those who work across both health and social care.
The response read: “Inter-professional learning and the attainment of core competences that traverse professional groups ensure superior team working, trust and empathy across professions.”
Joint training is already occurring in a few areas of England, for example the Surrey Health and Social Care Joint Training Partnership (SJTP) is a Surrey-wide annual programme of joint learning and development training that enables health and social care staff to train together with service users, carers and members of the voluntary sector to support the delivery of joined up integrated care.
While the integration of health and social care is a fundamental element of the Five Year Forward View, integrated training was not mentioned in the plan.
The response also revealed that HEE would be piloting new roles, such as medical assistants, in collaboration with the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) and other partners, in a bid to reduce the administrative burden placed upon GPs and nurses.
It also read: “HEE is planning to develop the general practice and community nursing workforces; the Transforming Nursing for Community and Primary Care project is working in partnership with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), RCGP and NHS England so as to develop a comprehensive and realistic plan for the future of primary care nursing services.”
