Support Workforce Learning Week

The Support Workforce encompasses those colleagues within business and administration, estates, and facilities roles alongside clinical support workforce colleagues in nursing, midwifery, and the allied health professions, some 67,000 of us!

Following the first online learning week, you gave us your feedback:

You said: In your feedback, that you wanted more opportunity to network with colleagues and the ability to choose from a variety of learning and development sessions delivered over one week to best fit around work and personal commitments.

You said: You were looking for learning sessions which would support your career aspirations, raise the profile of your roles, and a shared vision message of pride in the roles that support workforce colleagues carry out throughout health and care.

We did: In the spirit of continuous improvement, your Support Workforce Learning Week 2023 took place from Monday 2 October to Friday 6 October. The theme this year followed the five workforce pillars of the National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care: Plan, Attract, Train, Employ and Nurture.

There were 19 sessions delivered over 4.5 days providing 18 hours of training by 26 presenters to over 2,000 attendees from different organisations across the country including NHS Boards, Public Health Scotland, Health Improvement Scotland, NHS24, GP practices, Crossreach, Health and Social Care partnerships and Local Authorities.

We did: Sessions were varied and included:

• Taming your Advice Monster
• Delegation
• Developing a Person-Centred Culture
• Your Career, Seeking Strengths, and Opportunities.

In addition your event contained specific networking sessions entitled Colleague Conversations: Your Thoughts On... Our Experience Sharing Space. These sessions provided the opportunity for colleagues to get together and spend some time talking about what matters to them, being valued in their role and taking pride in their job.

A wider evaluation of the learning week is currently being carried out and we will be delighted to share this with you in forthcoming Access editions.

If you have any questions in relation to the Support Workforce Learning Week, please contact wideningaccess@nes.scot.nhs.uk