BAPO is proud to be a part of a new anti-bullying alliance, supporting and sharing ideas and promoting resources and support systems
Bulling has no place in healthcare or the NHS, and it negatively effects staff, services and patients. BAPO are strongly committed to supporting our P&O professionals alongside the wider healthcare environment to erradicate bullying
For more information and resources see the Anti-Bulling document below
“This year we have seen the NHS long term plan explicitly identify that digitally enabled care will go mainstream across the NHS to improve population health and support healthcare professionals. This is supported by the recently published Topol review recommendations, asking NHS staff to make the most of innovative technologies such as genomics, digital medicine, artificial intelligence and robotics to improve services. As allied health professions (AHPs) we have an individual and collective responsibility to play a role in the development of these digital and data capabilities, anticipating the challenges and realising the benefits.
Enabling AHPs to use information and technology is therefore one of 4 priorities in AHPs into Action. A Digital Framework for Allied Health Professionals – Key foundations for future clinical practice supports local services and AHPs to make that happen and works towards services that are both paper-free at the point of care and connected to other services and systems.
I would encourage you to share, discuss and use this framework with your members and networks. Together we can ensure we deliver digital and data enabled AHP services for the benefit of citizens and the wider health and care system.”
Kind regards,
Suzanne Rastrick
Chief Allied Health Professions Officer
NHS England
Our profession exists in a constantly changing environment. With improvements in technology, surgery and changing health profile for our populations, rehabilitation has been revolutionised over the last 20 years and will continue to adopt new procedures and components to maximise the outcomes for our service users. BAPO has created a strategy document for our association but we should also be looking forward to the future for the profession.
What’s on the horizon in the UK and the NHS?
Do our clinicians of the future need to have different skills?
Does our training need to change to anticipate this in our undergraduate programmes and post graduate CPD?
BAPO is creating a long term strategy for the next ten years for P&O to direct work and projects to ensure our profession is ready for the future, and we need your help.
To facilitate this, we are holding an event for all members to consider how we best structure our activities in the coming years. The event will include presentations from those involved in setting strategy in health economics, rehabilitation services, technology and healthcare generally. Following the presentations, you will be invited to contribute to group discussions to consider how these may impact on our own strategy. The day will conclude with bringing together the results of those discussions to help create a draft document of what our strategy may be.
We see this as an important event in giving you, the membership, an opportunity to help steer the future of our profession.
We look forward to meeting you on the day and very much hope as many as possible will attend the event.
Please fill in the below for or contact the Secretariat to confirm you attendance
MPs call for greater skills diversity in the NHS
A cross-party group of MPs today tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament urging the government to consider a law change, to allow for greater diversity of leadership at the top of the NHS.
Proposer of the motion Norman Lamb MP (Lib Dem) said; “Not many people will be aware that in many hospitals up and down the land today, skilled professionals who are not doctors or nurses, known as Allied Health Professionals (AHPs), are effectively banned from being Executive Clinical Directors on Trust Boards. If we want more creative thinking, and the voices of physios, OTs, radiographers and many other therapists to be heard in NHS boardrooms, then we need a law change. The current rules are holding us back.”
Parmjit Dhanda, Chair of the Allied Health Professionals Federation (AHPF) said: “We’re delighted that MPs have laid this motion before the House today and recognised the importance of AHPs in senior NHS roles. It is a reminder that our health service values all of its workforce. Doctors and nurses are crucial, but diversity of skills delivers better services. This motion reminds us all of the benefits that could be gained if a wider group of skilled professionals were allowed to take up Medical and/or Nursing Director roles on Foundation Trusts. But it does require the lifting of a legal restriction by the government.”
The EDM states:
“That this House shares the view of the Allied Health Professions Federation (AHPF) that greater diversity of talent in leadership posts in hospitals can boost multi-disciplinary working, reduce pressure on emergency departments and hence improve outcomes for patients; agrees with the AHPF that the rules governing NHS Foundation Trust hospitals which limit Medical Director roles to doctors and Nursing Director roles to nurses, is outdated and excludes over 150,000 Allied Health Professionals from these leadership roles; urges the Government to remove this unnecessary restriction in law, and broaden its diversity of talent in senior roles.”
AHPs are the 3rd largest sector in the NHS. There are 158,000 AHPs working within a range of surroundings including hospitals, people’s homes, clinics, surgeries, the justice system, local authorities, private and voluntary sectors and primary, secondary and tertiary education. The Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Act 2003 that established Foundation Trusts specified that Boards had to have a Medical and Nursing Directors with medical or nursing qualifications. While there may be some AHPs who are also Board Directors, historically these are often subsidiary to nursing directors, so AHPs don’t fill the most senior posts.
‘It is an established fact that throughout all sectors and industries, the most successful Boards are those with the greatest diversity. The NHS needs to do everything it can to ensure Boards access the widest talent possible and limiting the executive clinical roles to only two professions is out-dated and exclusive when we should be looking to simply recruit the very best clinicians to these senior positions.’
BAPO are pleased to support this EDM and to see it tabled in Parliament today
A brand new online careers resource has just been launched by Health Education England. It aims to raise awareness of the many opportunities for progression that are available to allied health professionals, including Prosthetists and Orthotists
A Universe of Opportunities for Your AHP Career is available on the e-Learning for Healthcare website and focuses on the range of development opportunities open to AHPs, covering eight potential areas for career progression. Clinical, management/leadership, research, education, digital transformation, entrepreneurship, public health and fellowships. For each of the eight areas, the resource includes an overview of the opportunities with useful resources and links, alongside a series of talking heads from across the AHP professions.
Many AHPs including Prosthetists/Orthotists taking all sorts of different careers paths appear in video and share what they have achieved and the barriers they have overcome
We are all working hard on being ‘apprenticeship ready’ For more information and handy hint guides look below:
Are you an NHS employer interested in apprenticeships, Click on the link for more information: https://www.nhsemployers.org/your-workforce/plan/workforce-supply/apprenticeships
What is a degree apprenticeship? Click here to find out: https://www.instituteforapprenticeships.org/developing-new-apprenticeships/resources/degree-apprenticeships-programme-structure/
Click here to access the P&O Apprenticeship Standard: https://haso.skillsforhealth.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2018.05.11-Prosthetist-and-Orthotist-Standard-FINAL.pdf
To learn more about the LEVY, click here: https://haso.skillsforhealth.org.uk/funding/#levy
An Employer Guide to Apprenticeships – https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/740254/Employer_guide_to_apprenticeships.pdf
Following our continued campaigning and pressure from within the Orthotics profession, today saw the launch of the Orthotics Improvement Collaborative. This is a 14-month project funded by NHS England and delivered by NHS Improvement. The project aims to improve the experience and outcomes of service users. A project team has been set up with the following people in the core group:
| Name | Role | Organisation |
| Joanne Fillingham | Joint Chair, Project Co-Sponsor | NHS Improvement |
| Neil Churchill | Project Co-Sponsor and Subject matter expert: patient experience | NHS England |
| Caroline Poole | Joint Chair, Senior Responsible Officer | NHS Improvement |
| Rebecca Loo | Subject matter expert: Co-production | The Orthotics Campaign |
| Claire Marshall | Subject matter expert: patient experience | NHS England |
| Matt Frederick | Subject matter expert: operational delivery | Sherwood Forest NHS Foundation Trust |
| TO BE IDENTIFIED | Commissioning Adviser | TO BE IDENTIFIED |
| Richard Wilson | Subject matter expert: Data | NHS Improvement |
| Marie Couturier | Data Adviser | South, Central & West Commissioning Support Unit |
| Stephanie Gates | Project Support Officer | NHS Improvement |
| Nina Pearson | Project Support Officer | NHS Improvement |
This project will see NHS Orthotics Services invited to participate the project, which is supported by a series of improvement events to empower service providers with improvement and development tools. Clinical teams shall gather simple data about their service, identify areas for improvement and make plans to address them using the tools taught by NHS Improvement. This is a great opportunity for service leads and clinicians to drive forward their ambitions for quality, boost their CVs and raise the profile of their services to their Trusts. Information and invitations shall be cascaded to services via NOMaG. There are limited places on the collaborative so get in early for this fabulous career opportunity.
You can search Twitter for the Hashtag #QualityOrthotics to follow and contribute to the unfolding conversation.
NHS Improvement has today published Clinical leadership – a framework for action, endorsed by the Allied Health Professions Federation. The framework looks at approaches organisations can take to encourage and enable more clinicians from all disciplines to pursue senior strategic leadership positions.
This document has been developed by a cross-directorate project team within NHS Improvement, as part of a wider programme of work following recommendations from the Government’s report: Barriers and enablers for clinicians moving into senior leadership roles: review report to the SoS for H&SC.
The guide includes 3 examples of AHPs in strategic senior roles – including Rachel McKeown (@Rachel66Mckeown), Clare Boobyer-Jones (@ClareBoobyerMPH) and Shane DeGaris (@Shanedegaris), including their associated case studies. There are only 11 case examples in the whole document, so AHPs have a very high profile within this national document. The guide and framework also reaffirms the recommendation from the June 2018 document, ‘AHP Leadership in Trusts in England: What exists and what matters’, which asked Trust boards to consider appointing a senior strategic AHP lead.
The key messages:
• The NHS Long Term Plan highlights the importance of visible senior clinical leadership in enabling and assuring the delivery of high quality care both within organisations and in the new system architecture.
• Allied health professionals, doctors, midwives, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, healthcare scientists and social workers can all potentially contribute to strategic leadership but we need to look at career structures and expectations that may currently stand in their way.
• The framework has been developed through discussions with clinicians exploring some of the barriers and enablers they identify when moving into senior leadership positions.
• We want organisations to do more to actively involve clinicians in their leadership groups.
• Evidence suggests that professionally diverse teams are better equipped to meet the complex challenges facing the NHS.
• NHS Improvement’s ‘Clinical leadership – a framework for action’ highlights approaches organisations can take to encourage clinicians from all disciplines to pursue senior leadership positions. The framework is accompanied by a range of case studies in which clinicians from a range of disciplines share their own experience of the journey to senior leadership roles. As you will see, the guide includes three specific AHP case studies.
The NHS has transformed the health and wellbeing of our country in its 70-year history. Its future relies on its people, and their dedication in looking after our health.
From diagnosis to recovery, each patient journey is a result of collaboration from NHS England staff – from IT, digital and support professionals, allied health professionals such as orthotists and prosthetists to nurses and doctors, everyone who works in the NHS has a role to play in supporting patients.
As part of the “We are the NHS” campaign, the first recruitment drive for the NHS in over a decade, on Thursday 31st January, the campaign will focus on illustrating the stimulating and rewarding roles available in orthotics and prosthetics within the NHS.
The campaign supports commitments made in the NHS Long Term Plan to recruit more people into the workforce and ensure its staff have rewarding jobs and work in a positive culture, with opportunities to develop their skills and use state of the art equipment.
Orthotists and prosthetists working in the NHS make a difference to the lives of a wide range of patients, from cerebral palsy and stroke sufferers, to amputees. The campaign aims to inspire more people to consider a role as a prosthetist and orthotist in the NHS.
NHS staff touch the lives of the 1.4 million patients treated in England every 24 hours. Regardless of their specific role, all staff contribute to caring for each and every one of these patients with care and compassion when it matters most.
The NHS has grown to become the single biggest employer in the UK, with 1.3 million workers, making it the fifth-largest workforce in the world.
To find out more about the opportunities available right now, visit www.jobs.nhs.uk or keep an eye on our social media feeds to learn more about the campaign
An Invitation to Participate in a National Survey
This is an in invitation to participate in a study being conducted as part of a one-year project funded by Office for Students. The study consists of two parts. Part one is an on-line survey and part two is participation in a focus group discussion. This message is about completing the survey. Please see the Participant Information Sheet which tells you about the survey. If you wish to participate in the survey, there is a link attached. If you click on the link it will take you directly to the survey where you can begin completing your responses.
https://salford.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/appreticeships-and-placements-initiative-3
You do not have to complete the survey in one sitting – it is possible to save your responses and come back at a later date to complete your responses before submitting your completed survey.
Many thanks for considering taking part in this survey.