Back in January we were able to provide our stakeholders with an infographic produced by our Strategic Workforce Analyst and Strategic Workforce Modelling Lead about the intellectual disabilities workforce across the South, and we’ve reproduced it here for you.
Click here to down load a copy
They used both the NHS Electronic Staff Record and the National Minimum Dataset (the adult social care workforce) data to give a snapshot of who makes up this workforce. It’s a testament to our colleagues’ skills that they have produced something so easy to understand from a plethora of different datasets! Roles include learning disability nurses, speech and language therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, occupational therapists, nurses, dietitians and other people involved in providing direct care. It’s worth remembering that this information doesn’t include personal assistants who are directly employed by people with learning disabilities or the children and young people workforce.
So what does this infographic tell us? Much of it won’t be a surprise to many of you, but to me as a non-clinician I still find it fascinating that
the vast majority of the workforce work outside of the NHS in the private, independent, voluntary and charity sectors,
and this remains the most unexpected piece of information that we give to new stakeholders and colleagues when we introduce the ID programme to them. I thought that it might be useful to look at two other facts shown in this infographic which I wasn’t aware of previously.
It was no surprise to me that women make up the majority of the workforce – around 75%. What is interesting is that men are most represented in managerial professions, which means that as
a man entering the intellectual disability workforce you are statistically more likely to undertake a managerial role than women. Why is this?
As a workforce, should we be looking at trying to change the statistics here or should we be concentrating on finding out why men are less likely to enter the ID workforce in the first place and looking at ways to encourage them to do so? What are the reasons that women are less likely to undertake a management role, are there barriers that need to be explored?
and – the big question – does it actually matter?
I also found it startling to learn from the infographic that
there is a higher turnover of staff within the NHS.
From way back in 2015 when the programme set up its first stakeholder meeting, colleagues from the independent sector have told us that one of their major workforce concerns is that of high staff turnover, which can make recruiting and educating and training staff extremely difficult. But from these statistics it looks like the NHS could learn from some of the good practice that must be happening externally. Interestingly one of the first projects we supported was a Staff Recruitment and Retention pilot, see here for the report: https://idhekss.wordpress.com/a-z/#employ2
So what is it that makes staff stay longer in their organisation? Is there more effective recruitment? Are they looked after better with their organisation therefore becoming a place where lots of people want to work? We don’t know for sure but what we do know is that there are pockets of good practice out there across all the sectors. I have used this blog to highlight just a couple of facts from the infographic that I have personally found interesting. There are so many more that I could have chosen. As the programme moves forward it is clear that its major aim – to create a sustainable and secure workforce supply so that people can live a good life – has to remain at the heart of everything we do.
Request for support
Over the last few weeks we have announced a number of project areas we need your support with. Details and deadlines for each can all be located below:
- REQUEST FOR SUPPORT: to lead a pilot project across the South of England to support the development of the non-specialist learning disability workforce when working with people who have a learning disability [Submissions by 28/03/19]
- REQUEST FOR SUPPORT: to lead a pilot project aimed at supporting Maternity services to more effectively support women and families who have learning disabilities [Submissions by 14/04/19]
- REQUEST FOR SUPPORT: to develop and lead a multi phased pilot project to identify and explore overcoming potential workforce barriers that may be impacting on the uptake of the learning disability health checks scheme [Submissions by 07/04/19]
Don’t miss out on a chance to support the workforce to innovate and develop so that they can offer even better care and support so that people can live the life they deserve.
Don’t forget
If you want to become a stakeholder and get weekly email updates click here. If you want to get in touch to tell us what you think about this blog or any other related matters email us at SouthID@hee.nhs.uk . If email is just not your thing you can also contacts via twitter @HEE_SouthID using the hash tag #SouthID, or via Linkedin or Instagram
Workforce Development for & with People with Intellectual Disabilities 