Workforce Development by John Goldsworthy

Workforce development is about making sure that we have the right people with the right skills to support people with learning disabilities and their families.

The Partnership Board annual plan for 2010 and 2011 said that we would have co-produced a workforce development plan by March 2011.

I am here today to tell you what we have been doing to make this happen.

The Learning Disability Partnership Board have set up a workforce development group and they have been meeting since October.

The workforce group are: People with a learning disability Family carers Community nurse Manager from a care organisation People who work for the training section of the County Council People from the National Health Service A person from Skills for Care who does a lot of work on training.

We are really pleased that these people have offered to help and we are sure that we can work really hard together.

Some people who we have invited to the meetings have not been able to come yet. People from: Colleges Employment services Young People’s Learning Agency Care workers Advocacy groups BME groups

But we know that these people are very busy and if they could not join us we have been making sure they know what we have been talking about. We will make sure that these people and a lot of others see our plan when it is written down.

We have been asking for a lot of information so that we understand about the workforce and about the numbers of people with a learning disability. All of this information will be written down in the plan.

We have talked about the kinds of people who work with people with a learning disability now and the kinds of people who might work in the future. We want to ask you some more about this later on.

We are meeting every month until March 2011 and by then we hope to have written down everything into a plan.

We will show this plan to a lot of people and ask them what they think and we will bring it back to the Local Partnership Groups and the Partnership Board. We hope to do this in May 2011.

We have also brought lots of people together who are looking at how we can train people in learning disability awareness.

These people are going to write some training that everybody can use so we know that everybody is being told the right and same information. There will be more information about this in our plan.

We think we will have a plan written by March so we think we have done what the board has asked.

The Partnership Board annual plan for 2010 and 2011 also said that people with learning disabilities and family carers will have provided some of the training for people working in learning disability services and general services.

We know that this has happened but we would like it to happen more. People with a learning disability have helped with the training of: staff that are on a social services course staff at Kettering General Hospital prisoners at Wellingborough Prison A really good outcome.

Family carers are helping to train people on a 2 nd Sharing the Knowledge course, which is really good.

People with a learning disability will be training library staff about learning disability in February. We think this has been achieved, so we think this should have a green thumb as well.

If you are interested in helping us with anything to do with workforce development please tell me or Dawn and we will contact you.

Thank you for listening Any questions? ?

Now it is time for you to give us your ideas. We would like you to split into groups and talk about 4 things. We would like you to come back and tell us 2 important things your group wants to say.

We will write everything down that is talked about in the groups and make sure the workforce group hears about your ideas.

The questions What is good about the staff that support you now? What is not so good about the staff that support you now? What would you like to see change about the staff that support you in the future? What skills/abilities do you think that the staff that might support you in the future will need?