Health, Wellbeing and Local Government Committee
Committee Inquiry into Workforce Planning- Evidence from the Unison Cymru/Wales Health Group
In responding to this Enquiry UNISON has been informed and consulted with many sections of our health membership employed in secondary, primary, community and HEI settings. UNISON has 35,000 members directly employed by NHS Wales across all groups and disciplines and feels both well placed and well informed to comment on these matters.
Workforce Planning
One of the key aspects of NHS Wales’ workforce planning is in respect of the annual education commissioning arrangements. This is led by the Workforce Development Team at NLIAH and currently is driven primarily by NHS Trusts responding to questions posed regarding their staffing requirements to inform the commissioning process.
The development of that process also engages with higher education institution stakeholders and thus the final commissioning numbers are then shared with other stakeholders including now the NHS Partnership Forum. We understand that the process for future years is intended to change and will be engaging with a broader audience including finance.
It is UNISON’s view that the current arrangements around workforce planning take insufficient regard to either future patterns of service demands or equally importantly for the development and modernisation of a workforce for future roles. We believe that the current arrangements and systems are still primarily developing workforce commissioning on historic lines and reinforcing traditional professional boundaries. As a consequence of changes to the NHS pay system there are potential opportunities emerging as a consequence of new approaches in staff development. Regrettably it is UNISON’s view that these opportunities will not be taken primarily because they would require significant change in the roles and skills mix of staff in clinical and patient areas.
There are other implications that have arisen as a consequence of the new NHS pay system and there is the potential that if modernisation is to benefit from that new pay system we will have a legacy of workforce structures which will no longer be fit for purpose, will not meet the needs of patients whether in hospital, community or social care settings and which in time will also become unaffordable.
UNISON has long held the view that holistic changes are essential to develop a 21st Century workforce that can flexibly move between all care settings from the hospital environment to community and/or social care. Therefore the workforce to support that will have to be developed with a bottom up approach to ensure both future affordability and staff flexibility without the constraints of existing professional boundaries and demarcations. These are challenging issues which will never be addressed without a central emphasis at governmental level which will need to be resourced as new arrangements need to be developed in parallel with traditional arrangements. We particularly view the opportunities presented with a bottom up approach where particularly for health staffs additional skills become the normal expectation for progression through both NVQ levels and further learning such as the OU K100 syllabus from which core future workforce of assistant practitioners can be forged. We believe this is a challenging feature of any modernisation ideals and aspirations for future workforce development, workforce planning need to be developed based on both clinical need and long term affordability and inevitably the skill mix requirements to meet patients’ needs in whatever settings should dictate both future policy development, changes to clinical practice and modernisation. Regrettably UNISON thinks that without that being driven from the centre, the NHS labour market will continue to be based on historic lines rather than future needs.
