Health and Social Care Support Worker
NES and SSSC strategic partnership involves a number of work streams with one supporting the joint development of a Health and Social Care Support Worker and consideration of associated education and training programmes in collaboration with Health Boards and the social services sector. This work supports the Reshaping Care for Older People programme. NES/SSSC Strategic Joint Group takes overall responsibility for the workforce agenda within the Reshaping Care Programme. However a Workforce Operational Group has now been established, with a number of recommendations, including the provision of guidance for employers on the development of Health and Social Care Workforce.
The challenges are many for education and role development and include the need for national consistency but flexibility for local variation. Links to the NHS Knowledge & Skills Framework (KSF) / and or SSSC Continuous Learning Framework (CLF) should also be clear. There is recognition that the term support worker within each of the sectors carries different interpretation and requirements and the regulatory requirements are different, with SSSC registering support workers for the social services sector.
Whilst there is existing evidence of the development of health and social care workers there remains a requirement to identify and understand how both the health and social service providers are managing the skills requirements of support workers in relation to current and future, more integrated service delivery.
