Presentation / Discussion
Minutes:
The Board received presentations from Bernard Groen (Health Education North East), Jackie Cairns (CCG), John Costello (Gateshead Council) and Deborah Dews (Gateshead GP Transformation Team) on Gateshead Health & Care Workforce: Challenges and Opportunities.
During the course of the discussions on the presentations, the Board noted that:
· Issues around workforce recruitment and retention are often tied to prospects for the local area and available resources and investment in the area;
· Linked to the above, there is a need to secure local powers that will help us to shape our own destiny;
· Much work is taking place at a regional level through the Local Workforce Action Board/Group which Gateshead and Newcastle feeds into. This also links to the Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) and it may be helpful to have an update on this work at a future date.
· It is important to engage and work with local universities and colleges in looking to address the workforce issues identified e.g. work between the Q.E. and Gateshead college.
· We need to explore the scope for greater use of promotional videos to sell the local area (why come to the North East).
· Consideration also needs to be given to the workforce needs of services that people have been sign-posted to, including within the VCS. It was felt that this should feed into and form part of commissioning arrangements. How non-commissioned services contribute to our health and care agenda is an important consideration.
· We need to continually review how new technologies can be harnessed to support our local workforce so that it can work in new way and deliver our new models of care
· The solution to workforce shortages is not always about recruiting more of the same. The answer can often be supporting staff to work in different ways ensuring the ‘prevention’ is embedded in everything we do and is seen as everyone’s responsibility – being proactive rather than reactive in our approach.
· ‘making every contact count’ is a good example of how prevention can be embedded within the roles of all staff
· There appears to be a real will to progress primary, secondary and tertiary prevention which needs to be factored in to our workforce planning and skills development
· There is a need to park ‘organisational tribalism’ and address workforce needs across the local health and social care system as a whole.
· An Organisational Development plan is currently being developed for the local health and care system which will have regard to the workforce challenges and opportunities identified within the presentations. This can be brought to the Board for consideration at a future date.
The Board agreed that the workforce agenda should become a regular agenda item for the Board and all partners present agreed that working together to embed the prevention agenda across our workforce would be beneficial.
RESOLVED - (i) that the information presented noted and this item to become a regular agenda item for future meetings.
(ii) that a report be brought to a future board meeting on the Organisational Development plan that is currently being developed for the local health and care system