The Welsh government has published a ten-year vision for its health and care workforce as part of its ‘A Healthier Wales’ strategic plan.
The ‘A Healthier Wales: Our Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care’ is underpinned by seven key themes shaped by a year-long consultation.
The seven themes include ‘An Engaged, Motivated and Healthy Workforce’, ‘Attraction and Recruitment’, ‘Seamless Workforce Models’, ‘Building a Digitally Ready Workforce’, ‘Excellent Education and Learning’, ‘Leadership and Succession’, and ‘Workforce Supply and Shape’.
In total, the strategy contains 32 actions to be taken forward within three year, although some actions will take longer than others to deliver in full.
Top of the action list is to introduce a health and wellbeing framework across the health and social care workforce, which will set “clear and measurable standards to help drive improvement”.
The framework will be co-produced with employers, trade unions, staff and students, including groups from protected characteristics and based on exemplary practice from other sectors.
Other actions include working towards “fair reward and recognition across the health and social care workforce” taking into account the Report of the Fair Work Commission (2019) and Is Wales Fairer? (2018).
“(The workforce strategy)provides a high level strategic framework, which signals our ambition to value and support our workforce, engaging and motivating them through compassionate leadership embedded throughout our system, and empowering them to develop their skills and agility to respond quickly to future challenge and opportunities,” said Welsh minister for health and social services Vaughan Gething.
“This is the way for us to deliver a transformed health and care system which is sustainable, focussed on wellbeing, care closer to home and will deliver for our future generations,” he added.
