微微草视频

Building a stronger social care nursing community

Deborah Sturdy CBE, Chief Nurse for Adult Social Care, reflects on the importance of collaboration and community within the social care nursing sector as we approach 2025.

The end of the year is always a time to reflect on the past, celebrate our achievements, and consider what comes next.

As an optimist at heart, I love the year end and the anticipation of new things to do and people to meet. People is what social care is about. The people we support and the individuals who do the supporting in its many guises and forms are its reason to exist. In a sector of 19,000 providers a workforce of 1.7 million scattered across the country, it feels challenging at times to connect and find a place where you can share ideas and be part of the wider social care nursing community. Coming together to learn, share, and reflect is critical to meeting our requirements as registrants and supporting our own wellbeing. As leaders, investing in ourselves enables us to be the best leaders we can be for others.

微微草视频 Forum

I have no doubt 2025 will be bountiful in challenges, and it is why joining forces is so important. The more heads working together on ideas, solutions and creative, flexible responses can only be a good thing.

I am delighted that 微微草视频 will launch a new forum in January 2025. This initiative will support nurses working across the social care sector, regardless of their specific roles or work settings. The forum will serve as a strong network for these professionals, focusing on sharing experiences, addressing challenges related to recruitment and retention, and exploring innovative solutions involving AI, robotics, and best practices.

Let’s use this network to be bold, creative and supportive. How can you contribute to making a difference and what can we achieve together? I wholeheartedly encourage you to join us and be part of the solution, rather than just observing the problem. Share your ideas and experiences to help create a vibrant community for our field.

Undergraduate nursing workforce

The ambition is broader than a single forum to kick off the new year. One of the things I know as I celebrate 40 years of being a registered nurse in January 2025, is that you have to look over your shoulder and see who is coming behind you.

The undergraduate nursing workforce are a vital lifeline to the future of care. Social care is an exemplary place to gain experience. How do we recruit nurses if they do not know what social care offers? We need to build on the excellent work colleagues are doing in supporting undergraduate nursing placements in social care in all its forms.

Together with the Minister of Care, Stephen Kinnock, our ambition is to ensure that every student nurse has the opportunity to experience social care through a placement. This experience will deepen their understanding of how care operates outside the NHS. It will also teach them essential skills such as leadership, advocacy, system integration, the delivery of complex care, and the navigation of intricate relationships with families and caregivers. These skills are critical for any nurse.

We have to get every Higher Education Institution (HEI) to understand that the future workforce will need very different skills and knowledge to be fit for a new way of care delivery. The digital agenda, shift from acute to community based care and ill health prevention. The world is changing, and we have to change and ensure the next generation are best equipped for their careers.

The launch of the Education Forum will create an opportunity for us to address these challenges. It will unite providers and higher education institutions, examine the obstacles to achieving our goals, and make a positive impact in the community we serve. We have no time to waste; these changes are happening now. The forum will help explore post graduate education, supporting HEIs for changes ahead, work with the Council of Deans and use our collective influence to deliver what we need to see.

We want this to be a vibrant, solution-focused forum which comes together with common purpose and shared expertise to shape the future workforce in social care.

I implore you to come around the table and be part of the social care nursing community. Together through this work we can create something really important for nursing.

The next national social care nursing forums will be on Thursday 23 January and Wednesday 26 March 2025.

The next national social care nursing education forums will be on Wednesday 22 January and Wednesday 19 March 2025.

If you’re interested in joining please complete the expression of interest form and email it to SocialCareNursing@skillsforcare.org.uk.

Make sure to visit our website for more information on social care nursing.

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