Develop, grow and invest in our workforce, culture and clinical and professional leadership

We have a total workforce of 47,800 in Coventry and Warwickshire. This includes 20,700 employed by NHS providers, 23,500 in adult social care, 3,200 in primary care and around 400 employed by our Integrated Care Board. Staff turnover is high, presenting real challenges in terms of workforce capacity and service delivery.

In order to deliver quality health and care services for our population, we need people with the right skills, the right values, and in the right places. We have an ICB priority to care for and develop our workforce, ensuring they continue to have the resilience and support to deliver the best care to our patients and communities, especially employees from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities who make up 30% of our NHS and social care workforce.

We have a diverse population and a diverse workforce, and to ensure we develop a sense of belonging and inclusion for all staff we must raise the profile of our diversity and inclusion work.

Clinical and Care Professional Leadership (CCPL) needs to be a core foundation of the system and how we act, engage, and make decisions in the future. The system needs buy in from clinical and care professionals to enable effective integrated working. Equally important is a population health mindset, and the expertise and leadership of our public health workforce and their input into decision making in the system will be key.

Our informal workforce is critical to our system too. There are an estimated 34,000 unpaid carers in Coventry and 62,000 in Warwickshire, and there is a strong volunteer sector which supports our services and offers wider community support.

 

What are we doing already? 

Following an extensive programme of engagement, the Coventry and Warwickshire People Plan is now being updated. The NHS People Plan and ICS 10 people outcomes are key drivers for the development of this refreshed strategy.

 

Nationally there was acknowledgement at the inception of ICBs that clinical and care professional leadership (CCPL) will be critical to success and our local CCPL Framework was developed in preparation. The framework sets out the work so far for a new way of doing multidisciplinary engagement and leadership through a clinical forum function and clinical executive group. The framework will be refreshed to ensure it meets the needs of staff, avoids duplication and builds on the work being done already in constituent organisations. 

It is fundamental to have a framework to guide us as we change our thinking, ways of working, and collaboration across the system. The part of the framework that will describe how we do this together is called our Philosophy of Care; this will bring staff voices together to aspire to work as one Coventry and Warwickshire team. Other elements focus on how we share learning, improve quality and safety, network, communicate and develop leadership.  

 

What will change in our ways of working?

We want to see an ICS workforce that is aligned to and effectively enables the delivery of our system aims and priorities. This includes:

• people feeling looked after, supported and developed to enable new ways of working to improve services, and a culture of shared learning and collaboration 
• an expansion of the substantive workforce, where required to meet service needs, focussing on the local population, increasing uptake of health and care careers and retaining colleagues for longer
• frequent and open system-wide clinical interaction being embedded and supported by a strong clinical and care network in which all ICS members are included. 

 

What actions are we prioritising?

The priorities in our People Plan are:

• attracting and recruiting more staff and ensuring bias is removed from our processes, including launching our employability programme 
• people development and in particular the transformation of nurse education to ensure we can meet the requirement to expand the numbers of places and increase other routes into nursing. This priority also covers all other professions in particular AHP, medical, public health, social care and scientific roles. There is an important link with our widening participation priorities
• leadership capability building, through system wide approaches to development and talent management, giving increased opportunity to ICS members
• inclusion and diversity – ensuring that our recruitment approach is equitable, diverse and inclusive and raising the profile of our diversity and inclusion work to ensure we attract, retain and improve the working experience of diverse groups
• health and wellbeing – continued focus on provision of support for our people to ensure they feel supported, valued and able to provide great services to residents
• planning and efficiency – ensuring we clearly scope and plan workforce needs for the future, particularly with key system transformation programmes.  

We will work with Anchor Alliance partners to improve employability for the Coventry and Warwickshire population and improve access to training, education and employment for our most vulnerable residents, working with local university partners to develop education pathways for our future workforce.  

We also plan to undertake wide engagement to secure clinical and professional buy-in for integrated working and development of strong governance and networks to connect clinical and care professional leaders and ensure their voice and influence within the system.