Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust

The recent reports of both Francis (2013) and Cavendish (2013) set out a requirement to develop training and educational pathways for all health care assistants and support staff. A code of conduct for support staff has also been developed by Skills for Health and Skills for Care (March 2013) and the Government have included support staff development as one of 11 national priority projects in their mandate to Health Education England (DOH 2013) and Talent to Care (2013).Support workers make up around a third of the caring workforce and often spend more time with service users than nurses.

Recently tariff monies have been released with the intention of maintaining existing standards of learning environments (Tariff clarification letter, Health Education Yorkshire and the Humber July 2013) for pre-registration nursing students. This presents Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust with an opportunity to build on and develop current good practice initiatives as well as introduce innovative strategies to support and facilitate the learning of student nurses.