Planning opportunities for our team to grow with us

Leah Emerson, Clinical Nurse Manager at Risedale Estates spoke to us about how the organisation provides career pathways, offering opportunities for the team to stay and develop with them.

As Risedale Estates has grown to offer a wide range of services – including general nursing care, specialist homes for people with dementia, complex care, and support for those whose behaviour challenges – it’s had to adapt to ensure that its team has people with the right skills in the right roles to provide the care required.

This means making sure to recruit the right people into the right roles, as well as developing existing team members to meet changing organisational requirements.

Developing their team from day one

Leah told us that the organisation takes a unique approach to recruitment which focuses on developing people as part of the organisation from day one.

Most people will join the organisation as a healthcare assistant initially. This role is open to people who have no previous experience in social care and are looking to get started. Leah explains that once a new team member joins in this role they undertake a comprehensive induction and complete the Care Certificate to get them started.

New-starters are also provided with mentors to support them in learning their new job role.

Ongoing training

Leah explains that training continues through every stage of an employee’s career, beyond the initial induction.

This includes distance learning courses and in-house mandatory and non-mandatory training. Staff can also complete the Level 2 Adult Care Worker and Level 3 Lead Adult Care Worker apprenticeships. This can be complemented with math and English tuition if required, with the organisation’s in-house tutor. Training for care assistants in medication administration is also provided in some units.

Developing a path for progression

Barbara Johnson is Director of Nursing at the organisation. She identified a need to bridge the transition between their care assistant and shift leader roles. Shift leaders work alongside registered nurses to provide support in leading a team of health care assistants; ensuring great standards of care; administering medications; planning and documenting care interventions; completing clinical skills (such as wound care and clinical observations), and dealing with multi-disciplinary teams and families. This role can be a natural step up for care assistants.

Having identified this need, they developed a new training route which they describe as nurse support training. Staff who have completed the nurse support programme are able to step up into the shift leader role and work closely with the nursing team.

This training route has been running for some time and has helped to fill a gap that they had previously tried to recruit for.

For Leah, this new initiative has been a real success.

She tells us that the training was taken up by their healthcare assistants who had many years’ experience in their role and were ready for the next step.

The programme consists of two weeks’ in-house training to teach the skills required, including care planning, clinical skills and observations (including wound care), end of life care, mental capacity (including safeguarding), nutrition and hydration management, infection prevention control, and more in-depth medication training to be equipped to work alongside the trained staff nurses and to take on a leadership role. Leah says it’s helped the team identify people who then want to progress further onto a degree course in nursing.

Next steps

For team members who want to take the next step on from being a shift leader, the organisation offers the Assistant Practitioner Foundation degree, which is completed with the University of Cumbria, and includes dedicated weeks of study throughout the two-year programme facilitated at the university or online.

For the latest intake on the degree, there’s also the option to specialise in dementia.

Assistant practitioners that complete the foundation degree can do a top-up to become fully registered nurses, either in general nursing or mental health nursing.

For healthcare assistants who have completed a Level 2 or Level 3 apprenticeship, the organisation also offers a route straight onto a degree to go into a nursing qualification, part-time over four years. More recently, this has branched out to offer the nursing associate training route, which they’ve had one intake of staff complete.

After completing their nursing degree, there’s the option for staff to complete the full Level 7 qualification, or modules up to that level that suit the member of staff’s interests.

Leah is proud of the breadth of skills this enables their staff to train in. She says:

Risedale Estates has identified that having a well-trained workforce, with clear routes for progression and a plan for new leaders is what ultimately makes them ready for the future. As a result, they feel best placed to continue to deliver the best possible care for the people they support.

Barbara told us:

Find more information to support with staff learning and development on our #KeepLearning spotlight.

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