The guides utilise up to date evidence-based research from the Health Services Management Centre (HSMC), and experiential knowledge from clinical innovation in practice. They relate to 6 key specific areas of practice, namely: health and well being; children, young people and families; acute care closer to home; long term conditions; rehabilitation and end of life care.

These guides are for use by frontline clinicians, commissioners and providers and are based around a framework of ambition, action and achievement:

• Clearly setting out your ambition
• Taking action to deliver the ambition using the best available evidence (high impact changes)
• Demonstrating and measuring achievement (using quality indicators)

The guidance also includes six transformational attributes which practitioners and teams need to demonstrate in order to meet the requirements of the high performing practitioner-partner-leader roles.

This report, published in 2009, considers the degree to which NHS workforce planning in England is likely to support the delivery of a workforce that is fit for the future. The report:

• examines developments at national and regional level
• highlights relevant international experience
• proposes ways in which planning could be made more effective.

It includes appendices on SHA workforce training budgets and international approaches to workforce planning.

Recommendations

• Workforce planning at local and national level should be a core part of the productivity and quality improvement agenda.
• The annual assessment of priorities should look at the workforce in the round, not just the different professional groups and their sub-specialist elements. The assessment of risks should provide relevant information on education, employment law, pay, working conditions, and national and international flows. The report identifies a particular need to link pay policy to broader workforce goals.
• The planning and funding of broader workforce development, including leadership skills, should be given a higher priority.
• The 'multi-professional' approach to workforce planning should be strengthened.
• The planning capacity at regional and local level should be audited and improved.
• The Multi-Professional Education and Training (MPET) levy should be reviewed.
• Roles and responsibilities need to be clarified further.
• Greater transparency about the degree of inherent uncertainty is required.
• Workforce planning information needs to be secured from all health care providers.

Conclusion

The report concluded that the focus should be on developing a flexible approach that:

• does not seek long-term predictive precision but can identify potential medium-term issues, and
• (most importantly) enables the current workforce to evolve and adapt to the inherently unpredictable healthcare environment.

Skills for Health has published new editions of its English regional skills and workforce briefings.

The reports are free to download.

The project engaged over 80 stakeholders across the East of England in producing the final gold standard workforce model, plus a decision support tool to enable local implementation. The final report was supplemented with an analytical framework on the research for CAUs and population reports based on the 17 local providers.