Worcestershire Health and Social Care Dementia Education Programme
This vital training programme has been jointly developed by Worcestershire County Council and NHS Worcestershire in response to the projected significant increase in the number of people with dementia in the county, and the subsequent need to mainstream person centred dementia care across all health and social care sectors.The training is built on accepted good practice and the positive experience of delivering a similar programme for care home staff in the county, and the programme comprises three levels of courses for staff.
Previous research and evaluation suggests that in order to benefit fully from the programme it is necessary for staff within targeted sectors or services to engage in the full range of training courses, and in particular that senior managers attend the first three days of the leadership courses prior to other managers and staff attending the specialist courses, since their role in 'leading' change is vital.
As such you will need to plan ahead to ensure that appropriate staff are nominated for attendance on the courses advertised. We need to be sure that services are planning ahead in this way and for this reason we have developed a single nomination form that you or one of your representatives will need to return on behalf of the service as a whole. We do not want to receive individual nominations from staff direct.
At present we are only advertising courses that start in 2011/12 (further courses are planned for 2012-13), and we will re-advertise courses on a quarterly basis, but could you please return your initial nomination form to the Learning Development and Wellbeing Centre by Friday 15th April at the latest to allow us time to review and confirm places with the training providers.
Looking ahead it is also clearly vital that staff attend the courses in full to gain maximum benefit so please be aware that in order to safeguard this limited resource we will monitor attendance levels. If they fall below 90% we will review the situation with you to hopefully resolve any issues but if attendance levels do not improve following this review we will need to consider penalty payments.
I am sure we all agree how important this training programme is to meeting our aim of deliver person centred dementia care in all health and social care settings, and I would like to thank you all once more for your ongoing support for and commitment to this aim.
Please find attached flyers for all 3 courses and a nomination form for booking places.
If you would like to discuss anything further then please feel free to contact myself or Keith Hoare KHoare@worcestershire.gov.uk
Regards
Jenny Crouch
Learning and Development Advisor (Mental Health, Older People, Physical Disability and Choice and Control)
Resources Directorate
Learning, Development and Well-being Centre
Tolladine Road
Worcester
WR4 9NB
Tel: 01905 23368
Fax:01905 616008
jcrouch@worcestershire.gov.uk