Nurturing ambitions

We are currently working on a number of initiatives that will support colleagues to gain professional recognition and qualifications that are valued highly in our sector. The first is apprenticeships. We have embraced the government’s vision that ‘apprenticeships should be driven by employers’. Our Head of Learning & Development has chaired a number of ‘trailblazer’ apprenticeship groups which consist of other large and small employers across the UK. These apprenticeships will help professionalise the sector and will form part of a career pathway into nursing, alongside a new higher apprenticeship Assistant Practitioner. In a world where the social care sector is so short of nurses, qualifications like these are important in ensuring the competence of our workforce and to support the role of the nurse.