Unregistered health and care staff, known as the support workforce, make up around 47 per cent of the total workforce in health and social care. In healthcare alone, 60 percent of patient contact is spent with health care assistants, yet this group of staff only benefits from five percent of the overall NHS training budget.

Partners in the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West sustainability transformation partnership (BOB STP) are aiming to encourage practical training collaborations by launching a new Excellence Centre 29 May.

Virtual centre

The ‘centre’ is a virtual one: a partnership of organisations from the region’s health and social care sector, committed to improving access to high quality vocational training to the support workforce.

The aims of the BOB STP Excellence Centre are to:

• support and encourage practical education and training collaborations, building a more flexible and motivated workforce
• collaborate on developing and sharing learning resources, reducing costs and avoiding expensive ‘reinvention of wheels’ for all employers across the system
• recognise and promote high quality skills development that meets the needs of the wider health and social care sector
• partner with the best local training providers to ensure their programmes are relevant and viable
• make it easy for employers and individuals to find and access quality learning programmes and resources
• develop accessible career pathways and potentially promote the highest quality of apprenticeship opportunities and training

The Excellence Centre is hosted jointly by Oxford Health Learning and Development and Oxford University Hospitals Practice Development and Education team. They were recently awarded the Skills for Health Quality Mark, which means that their training provision meets a nationally recognised quality benchmark. The hosts will provide the infrastructure for the Excellence Centre but the activities will be run jointly with partners and delivered across the partnership.

The partners are celebrating the launch and the Quality Mark with a working lunch from 1.30pm until 2.30pm on Wednesday May 29. ​

Oak Room, Unipart House, Garsington Road, Cowley, Oxford, OX4 2PG

To book a place, please email: Joanna.rees@oxfordhealth.nhs.uk

See the invitation and membership information