North Central London Health and Social Care Academy

About

• Region: London
• Type of locality: Urban
• Year of launch: 2023
• Academy type: Health and Social Care Academy
• Funding model: GLA funded
• Key features: Focuses of underrepresented groups and those new to care

North Central London is an urban area with an estimated population of 1.4 million covering Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Islington. In 2022/2023 there were 38,000 adult social care jobs, 3,000 of which were unfilled. The average turnover rate was 20.4 per cent and the average vacancy rate was 11.7 per cent. According to Skills for Care, 32 per cent of individuals working in the care sector in North Central London are over the age of 55. As of January 2024, there were 51,274 healthcare jobs.

The North Central London (NCL) Health and Social Care Academy was established in June 2023 and was built upon a pre-existing social care programme, which focuses on entry routes into social care, progression and skills development. The Academy is part of Proud to Care North London, an initiative which seeks to aid recruitment and retention in the local health and care sector.

The overarching aim of the Academy is to raise awareness and aspirations to work in health and care among residents and support them into meaningful employment in the sector. 

The Academy has a person-centred approach to supporting people who are new to care. It is a priority to engage groups who would not typically interact with the sector or consider a career in care. The Academy is adopting a community outreach approach to target these groups of people.

In addition to delivering training and employability support for local residents, the Academy aims to create clear and accessible pathways into the sector, by connecting training and employment opportunities. It also seeks to encourage employers to adjust or flex their recruitment approaches to be more inclusive and values-based.

The Academy has a strategy which focuses on:

• promotion of the sector – highlighting opportunities in health and social care and providing a view on what it is like to work in primary, secondary and social care settings
• training and development – working with colleges and training hubs to tailor their health and social care courses to the needs of the sector
• resident engagement – engaging residents who would not typically consider or pursue careers in care, with the aim of uncovering and widening entry points and pathways into the sector
• employability support – working with employability services to upskill residents
• recruitment support – working with employers and employability services to match residents to locally available roles
• partnership building – working with employability services, voluntary services, and employers across the five boroughs to build sustainable networks.

The academy has a steering group which consists of representatives from the five boroughs, employers (including local independent care providers), local colleges and training providers. The academy also works with voluntary sector organisations to support people into a career in care.

The core Academy team consists of the following roles which are fully funded by the Academy:

• programme coordinator overseeing team activities and responsible for establishing strong working relationships with borough partners
• social care employer engagement officer focusing on engaging employers in the social care field and securing ring-fenced vacancies
• three resident engagement officers responsible for engaging and supporting residents to pursue a career in the health and social care sector (working closely with local employability services and training providers)
• Academy administrator providing administrative support and responsible for collecting and reporting outcomes evidence.

The academy works closely with employers, training providers and employability services to deliver person-centred support.

The academy is mainly funded through the Greater London Authority (GLA) Mayor’s Skills Academies programme with some additional local funding from the NCL Integrated Care Board (ICB) and the NCL Training Hub. There are two separate funding streams – one for healthcare and one for social care. 30 per cent of the funding is outcomes-based for sustained employment of more than 16 hours a week paying the London Living Wage. Delivery began in mid-2023 and funding has been allocated until Q4 2024/25. The Academy was provided with 10 per cent of funding up front to manage implementation costs.

Outcome targets are based on the number of residents who have been supported into health and care roles, including apprenticeships and paid work placements. The outcomes-based funding for each stream is mutually exclusive, which means exceeding targets in one area does not make up for not meeting them in the other. The academy set out to achieve a total of 491 outcomes over two years. These consist of 221 healthcare outcomes and 270 social care outcomes.

Scope and activities

The academy’s work is predominately focused on underrepresented groups or groups that do not typically pursue careers in health and social care. Activities include:

• community outreach activities to raise awareness and interest in the sector
• engaging with training providers and employers
• supporting individuals into suitable roles in health and social care
• arranging pre-employment training and linking individuals with key roles and employers
• placements – including volunteer pathways for refugees
• brokering suitable roles, for example, ‘matchmaking’ – where employment brokers offer a bespoke service working with individuals to introduce them to potential employers.

The academy runs pilot projects to determine whether certain initiatives have the potential to work long-term. For example, a pilot project was run in partnership with University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trusts (UCLH). Individuals were put on initial 3–4-month employment contracts (de facto probationary periods) with a view to becoming permanent members of staff if the employment relationship was a good match. Following the success of the pilot, the initiative was rolled out permanently.

The academy has specific initiatives that target refugees and care leavers, such as:

• regular career and recruitment events, including events exclusively for care leavers
• targeted engagement initiatives to access underrepresented groups, a number of which have focused on the Somali community in Islington and Barnet.

A four-week course taught four-days a week provided the skills and knowledge required to work in health and social care. 

The course covered:

• Level 2 Health and Social Care qualification
• English and maths skills and qualifications (online or classroom-based)
• communication and information management in the health and social care sector
• understanding roles within the sector including non-direct care roles (for example administrative roles, patient transport)
• digital skills training (classroom-based)
• equality and diversity training
• safeguarding training (for example, infection control)
• employability skills training (for example, CV writing and interview) techniques.

The Academy is focused on promoting health and social care careers to those who are new to care, thereby growing the workforce, as opposed to ‘recycling the existing workforce’. Having an integrated academy which designs impactful solutions collectively across health and care was important to be able to work with people in a person-centred way and not compete across both sectors.

Having funding and resourcing support from the GLA was a fundamental success factor in establishing the Academy.

The Academy has developed and facilitated networks and relationships with organisations across the local health and care system. These relationships have been important to the effective functioning of the Academy.

“Our networks form the building blocks for future potential opportunities and collaborations.”

The targets and reporting responsibilities set by the GLA have given the Academy direction and provided a monitoring framework that is outcomes-based and centred around specific performance metrics. As a result, the Academy’s goals were clearly defined from the outset.

There is considerable fragmentation across health and social care and across the employment and skills landscape. As such, building new partnerships and pathways across sectors has been time consuming and challenging to achieve within the context of time-limited funding and outcomes-based payments. However, the Academy has worked on designing impactful solutions and demonstrated that partners are open to redesign.

Some of the funding requirements have been resource intensive. For example, despite being an integrated health and care academy, there are separate funding streams for health and social care, with different targets and outcomes attached to each, which does not necessarily facilitate an integrated approach.

The way funding has been allocated has caused challenges as many roles span both sectors, but outcomes need to be linked to one or the other.”

Recruitment practices, such as the widespread use of zero hours contracts within parts of the care market, the inaccessibility of the Trac system (an online interface system that links with NHS jobs), and speed of onboarding within the NHS have sometimes acted as barriers to achieving employment outcomes. At times, this has led to good candidates accessing work that does not meet the funder’s requirements, or individual applicants exiting the process due to processing delays.

There are a high number of people within the population who want to work, but experience employment barriers, including asylum or visa status, cost of living or housing challenges. The Academy team seek to offer practical support and signposting, but in some cases, they are unlikely to achieve employment outcomes.

The academy used the Care and health career academy toolkit during their design stage to plan their monitoring and evaluation activities. So far, the Academy has achieved 165 outcomes by supporting people into employment, including apprenticeships and paid work placements.

The Academy produces an impact report for the GLA on a quarterly basis as part of their funding arrangement. Each impact report contains the following information:

• project highlights – activities that have been undertaken that have had a positive impact on the project, for example, events, meetings, milestones
• workforce integration and integration of underrepresented groups – activities that have been undertaken to engage underrepresented groups, for example, community outreach, workforce integration recruitment drives
• learners on new or adapted courses – number of learners broken down by course or provider (separate outputs for health and social care)
• sector needs and challenges – highlighting particular sector needs, what has been done to address these needs, and what the impact has been (separate sections for health and social care)
• raising awareness and promotion of the project – examples of what has been done to raise awareness, promote, and showcase the Academy’s work
• case studies – case studies for health and social care from the most recent quarter that demonstrate how the Academy has added value, for example, a specific participant journey.

The Academy has several key performance indicators that they use to monitor their progress, including:

• number of new employers engaged
• number of people participating in training and education
• number of people undertaking work experience placements
• number of people entering employment
• number of people entering apprenticeships
• number of people undertaking paid work placements.

The Academy also monitors the number of people from underrepresented groups who fall into these categories.

Website: NCL Health and Social Care Academy

Contact: [email protected]