The document discusses the challenges and opportunities for developing a high-quality health and care workforce. It emphasizes that developing the right workforce requires having the right values, leadership, capacity, and skills. It highlights how good staff management can improve patient outcomes and experience. Developing a skilled workforce with intelligent kindness is crucial for providing high-quality care, especially for tasks like assisting with eating that require skill. The focus must remain on prioritizing patients' interests and keeping them safe.

1. CfWI produces quality intelligence to inform better workforce planning,
that improves people’s lives
Challenges and Opportunities
for the Health and Care
Workforce
Jamie Rentoul
Director of Workforce Strategy
Department of Health

2. 2
Delivering High Quality Health and Care
It is the commitment, professionalism and dedication of the NHS, public
health and social care staff that can make the greatest difference in providing
high quality services and care for patients, service users and their families

3. 3
Enabling a high quality health and care workforce:
challenges & opportunities

4. 4
Enabling a High Quality Workforce
Developing the workforce to deliver high quality, effective
compassionate care requires:
• the right values
• the right leadership
• the right capacity
• the right skills

5. 5
Right values

6. 6
Right Leadership
“Good management of NHS staff leads to higher quality of care, more satisfied patients and
lower patient mortality. Good staff management offers significant financial savings for the NHS,
as its leaders respond to the challenge of sustainability in the face of increasing costs and
demands […] By giving staff clear direction, good support and treating them fairly and
supportively, leaders create cultures of engagement, where dedicated NHS staff in turn can
give of their best in caring for patients”
„NHS Staff Management and Quality: Results from the NHS Staff Survey‟
DH funded report by Prof. Michael West at Lancaster University Management School, 2011

7. 7
Right Capacity
Right Capacity
GPs 40,265
Consultants 40,394
Registrars 39,404
GP practice nurses 23,458
Support to doctors &
nursing staff 269,714
Support to
ambulance staff
13,451
Central functions
106,696
Hotel, property and estates
71, 242
Manager and senior manager
37,314
Qualified ambulance
staff 18,645
Allied health
professionals
74,902
Healthcare
scientists
31,173
Other scientific,
therapeutic
& technical staff 47,490
GP providers 26,886
Estimated number of NHS hospital
& community health service and
general practice workforce as at
30 September 2012:
1.36 million
Professionally
qualified
clinical staff
687,810
Other doctors in training
and equivalents 13,952
Other medical and
dental staff 12,302
Other GPs 8,898
GP registrars
4,426
Qualified nursing, midwifery
& health visiting staff
346,410
Support
to clinical staff
343,927
Infrastructure support 215,071
Nursing
369,868
Doctors
146,075
Scientific, therapeutic
& technical
153,472
Support to
scientific,
therapeutic
& technical staff
61,345
Residential
675,000
Domiciliary
831,000
Estimated number of adult social care jobs by
employer type in England, 2011:
1.85 millionDay
96,000
Community 251,000
Other GP practice staff
113,832
Direct care
776,200
Managerial/supervisor
y 31,700
Other
18,400
Professional
4,300
Right Capacity

8. 8
Right Skills
The Cavendish Review:
An Independent Review in Healthcare Assistants and Support Workers in the NHS and
Social Care Settings
“Helping an elderly person to eat and swallow, bathing someone with dignity and
without hurting them, communicating with someone with early onset dementia; doing
these things with intelligent kindness, dignity, care and respect requires skill […] Calling
this “basic” care does not reflect the fact that getting it right is a deeply skilled task.”
“This Review can only ever be a first stage on a long journey. These recommendations
are intended to start that journey, by ensuring that support staff are treated as a strategic
resource in health and social care. For some of them are the most caring of all.”

9. 9
Right Outcomes for people
“It is not sufficient to have a well-trained workforce. There also needs to be good clinical and
managerial leadership… leaders that demonstrate the right values and behaviours at every
level of the sector provide the best foundation for transforming social care”.
(Winterbourne View Review)
“… we will work with care providers, service users and carers to develop a sector-specific
compact, including a skills pledge, to promote culture change and skills development”.
(White Paper – Caring for our future: reforming care and support)
“…there needs to be a relentless focus on the patient‟s interests and the obligation to keep
patients safe and protected from substandard care. This means that the patient must be first in
everything that is done: there must be no tolerance of substandard care; frontline staff must be
empowered with responsibility and freedom to act in this way under strong and stable
leadership in stable organisations”.
“The common culture and values of the NHS must be applied at all levels of the organisation,
but of particular importance is the example set by leaders”.
(the Francis Inquiry)