Workforce Innovation Adoption Fund

For the health and care workforce, COVID-19 has added new challenges to already challenging work. Our Workforce Innovation Adoption Fund aims to support innovation that responds to these challenges. While health and care staff are the most critical part the system, innovation is often thought to be just about technology. This fund focuses on staff, and innovation to improve their experiences.

Innovations being supported

• Enablement Champions A team from Care City are developing an innovative new role for experienced social care staff who will act as the expert within their teams on specific health issues. The Enablement Champion role will not only provide a highly valued career development opportunity for the social care workforce but will also enable staff to be better aligned with health professionals’ interventions for service users, ultimately improving outcomes for residents.
• Frontline Learning Coordinators (formerly known as Bedside) The Frontline (Bedside) Learning Coordinator role was originally developed at the NHS Nightingale Hospital to facilitate the communication and escalation of experience-based insights captured by frontline staff, to leaders who can rapidly identify and implement solutions at a systemic level. A team from Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust are spreading this initiative across all areas in the Trust’s three main sites, creating a culture of continued improvement and learning by listening to staff, patients and relatives.
• Video-Linked Tablets COVID-19 has seen senior clinicians increasingly inaccessible to junior members of staff and patients. A team at the Royal Free have developed a solution to this challenge, with the use of real-time video-linked tablets that junior team members take to the bedside, enabling Consultants to remotely supervise them on a high-quality screen. This innovation not only increases confidence in junior staff members, but also reduces stress and pressures on senior staff members.
• The Listening Space A team from Camden GP Federation have developed and are digitalising The Listening Space. This unique project started in the courtyard of the Caversham Group Practice to create a space for staff, patients and the community to help combat feelings of stress and isolation in the workforce. By live-streaming and recording cook-alongs, wildlife in the garden, live music etc. the team aim to build confidence and joy in work whilst reconnecting staff with patients and colleagues.
• Social Care Support Groups With the vast impact COVID-19 has had on social care, Barnet Primary Care Training Hub are establishing virtual education and support groups based on the Balint model, for social care providers across North Central London. This model of facilitated virtual peer support groups is new to social care and will offer a support network for staff, as well as provide opportunities to upskill and build confidence in the nursing and social care professionals training to become educators or facilitators for the groups.
• ICS-wide OH and Wellbeing Service North London Partners in Health and Care are adopting and implementing a single, consolidated occupational health and wellbeing service. Having already secured buy-in from all provider trusts, this innovation is on its way to creating a more sustainable and resilient service, which focuses on proactive support rather than reactive support. This will grant the 42,000 staff in NCL equitable access to a higher quality and greater variety of OH and wellbeing services.