South East England Development Agency (SEEDA)

Continuing its focus on working with the NHS on skills attainment, literacy and numeracy, the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) has organised a major conference in Southampton. This follows on from the launch of a Programme earlier this year which highlighted skills development across the region's health service.

Jointly organised with 'IT Break Into Health', the conference brought together Further Education establishments and those charged with the task of delivering the NHS lifelong learning agenda.

A constraint to the vision of a top quality health care system is the issue of human resources, not only in terms of numbers of staff but the development of their potential, especially in the South East. The number of employees in the health sector across the region stands at some 140,000 which, when added to those primary, secondary and private care work not employed by the NHS, clearly makes the health service a significant employer.

SEEDA Basic Skills Manager, Barbara Bicknell, commented: "The NHS is a major employer offering a wide variety of employment opportunities. There is considerable investment in recruiting and retaining staff for medical and non-medical roles and the first step to ensuring that NHS employees benefit from personal development opportunities lies in making them aware of what is available. SEEDA sees workplace skills training as a model within each NHS Trust which can help people improve their skill levels in a number of areas to fit in with their lives and work patterns."

"This will show us how this works in parts of the NHS where we have already operated schemes. A first step to spreading workplace essential skills training across this vast organisation is bringing colleges and other learning providers together with NHS Trusts."

One of the speakers at the Southampton conference, IT Break Director, Liz Duckworth, shared the experience her organisation has gained in delivering essential ICT skills in hospitals. She said: "An organisation as vast and diverse as the NHS poses challenges in ensuring a solid standard of skills development.

"Our initiative helps staff to build up skills to support their work such as IT, communication, literacy and numeracy, giving them the confidence to move on to other training and development. Growth in demand for healthcare workers forecast to the end of the decade, further reinforces the need for consistent and comprehensive staff development in the interests of quality service for everyone."