Bringing the shared workforce priorities to life in Gateshead and the North East

Background

In 2020, ADASS, LGA and Skills for Care agreed five national shared workforce priorities:

Strategic workforce planning
Growing and developing the workforce to meet future demand
Enhancing the use of technology
Supporting wellbeing and positive mental health
Building and enhancing social justice, equality, diversity and inclusion in the workforce.

The aim in agreeing the priorities was to support councils and regions in making more significant progress in improvement across these priority areas. It was also recognised in 2020, that in the absence of a national workforce strategy, the shared workforce priorities provided a framework for councils and regions to consider in identifying their own local priorities.

The challenge

It’s one thing to develop a set of shared workforce priorities on a page, it’s another thing to bring them to life and use them in practice.

In conversation with Steph Downey, Gateshead Council's Service Director for Adult Social Care, Integrated Adults and Social Care Services we explored how Gateshead have used the shared workforce priorities and how they have been used at a regional level in the Northeast of England.

The Northeast ADASS regional team used the shared workforce priorities as a frame to develop a regional workforce strategy. Using this approach meant that as a region, councils had a common overall framework that they could link back to the nationally agreed shared workforce priorities. Doing this they made sure that that had one set of commonly understood priorities rather than each council taking their own approach and having multiple different varieties that councils couldn’t compare and contrast or create a common understanding of what the key workforce priorities were across the region.

The solution

In Gateshead, they took the shared workforce priorities and the regional workforce plan and used this as a starting point for their local workforce plan. For Gateshead they liked the idea of a framework that meant that they could say that what they were doing locally was in line with what was being produced nationally and regionally, and Gateshead could demonstrate locally how they were following the shared workforce priorities.

Gateshead has particularly focused on the priority about the wellbeing of the workforce. They have done a lot on wellbeing. They have held a wellbeing week and have got various activities happening throughout the year. The service has recently renewed a directorate-wide wellbeing survey last undertaken in 2022 (from which a ‘you said, we did’ action plan was developed and monitored). The 2024 version has been combined with a health and safety wellbeing audit; the results of both are currently being monitored.

Gateshead has an employee engagement forum for their workforce and have specifically talked to the forum about what does good wellbeing look like, utilised the ideas and suggestions from the group to develop the wellbeing offer and used the group to raise awareness about the various services and offers in place to support their own wellbeing.

Looking at the priority on growing the workforce to meet future demand Gateshead also has a large focus on apprenticeships, having been an early adopter of the social work and occupational therapy degree apprenticeships. Following the success of the ‘upskill’ apprenticeship model with existing employees, Gateshead developed a model for social work and occupational therapy trainees for new recruits, which was cited by the Department of Health and Social Care as a model of good practice.

An adult social care graduate management trainee role linked to a higher level apprenticeship saw over 180 people apply for three roles to work in the service improvement function, and building on the success with degree apprenticeships the service is shortly due to go out to recruitment for a number of apprentices to work within the direct care services, with a particular focus on learning disability support roles.

The impact

Whilst Gateshead would have done some of this work without the shared workforce priorities, it’s been helpful to have a framework that enables Gateshead to show that the things Gateshead is doing are in keeping with the shared workforce priorities and that they are not off track, doing random things that don’t fit into an overall regional and national picture.

Lessons learned

The shared workforce priorities have given Gateshead a framework to develop their own local plans, which gives Gateshead more confidence, knowing that the shared workforce priorities have been explored and tested with a very broad range of people and organisations across England.