The NHS is suffering a recruitment crisis with hospitals being forced to search for increasing numbers of nurses and other staff from overseas. But amid the gloom one hospital in the north of England is bucking the trend and has shown that the answer to the problem can be found closer to home.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS trust is believed to be the first hospital in the UK to rely on the local community to solve its staff shortages. By reaching out to young people and those on benefits, including incapacity benefit, the trust has provided more than 450 jobs for local people, improved patient care, and opened young people's eyes to the wide variety of jobs in the NHS.
Now the remarkable success of the scheme has been rewarded as the trust has been named as the winner of the recruitment and retention category of the Guardian Public Services Awards.
This award follows four years of hard work by the trust which has developed a twin approach aimed at teenagers living in cities of high unemployment, and people who have spent long periods out of work.
As a result, young people living in the city may be allocated a mentor within the health service, and taken on to wards to get a taste of what it's like to work in the NHS. Older people, including those with mental health problems or chronic illnesses, have been helped back into the workplace with offers of jobs such as housekeepers or health care assistants.
Yet this comprehensive strategy happened almost by accident. Maxine Morris, head of personnel of strategic projects, says the initiatives - Schools and Colleges and Employability - were set up separately, but it is only recently that they were drawn together. "I realised they had a lot of common aims and brought them together," she says. Each strand has involved partnership working and relies on using resources creatively. Both aim to bring down barriers to employment and encourage people to have a career in the health service.
The impact is impressive. Employability, which was set up four years ago, has already won national awards and been hailed as a beacon of good practice in the NHS. Meanwhile, more than 500 teenagers from 20 schools and two further education colleges have taken part in the education strand of the programme, launched two years ago. Part funded by Education Leeds - Aim Higher, the Learning and Skills Council West Yorkshire and East Leeds primary care trust, the project identifies schoolchildren who need extra support to realise their potential in science. "We try to encourage young people to consider a career in the health service and provide support for them to reach their potential both educationally and vocationally," says Morris.
The trust is currently focusing on medicine, professions allied to medicine, nursing and midwifery. Staff from different departments hold interactive workshops for young people. Careers information is made available to the children and they are also offered health service mentors.
Lynda Ross Field, education liaison officer, says it is too early to judge the success of the scheme, which was set up two years ago. However, young people seemed to enjoy it. "They seem to be recommending the programme to their friends - but we won't know for several years how successful it is. We hope that we can hang on to them." The programme has also obtained funding from the healthcare strand of the national Aim Higher programme to roll out to Yorkshire and the Humber region.
However, careers advice to young people is not limited to certain professions: young people can get information on jobs across the health service. This is available from a new NHS employment advice centre set up in a public area within the trust. The centre offers a walk-in service for staff and members of the public, and is an important source of careers advice. Staff are on hand to help fill in application forms, give tips on interview skills and offer advice on career pathways and development.
It is this centre which links the Schools and Colleges project with the Employability strategy, aimed at the long-term unemployed. Led by the trust, the project is supported by Leeds city council, Mencap, JobCentrePlus and the Leeds health action zone. Open days are now held throughout the year. People who attend are offered a skills assessment, a period of train ing, work experience and help with job applications. Opportunities exist for clinical support workers, medical secretaries, ward housekeepers, and administrative and clerical posts.
Alice Winter, project manager, says the project sprung out of focus groups where unemployed people, lone parents and disabled people discussed barriers to work.
"These focus groups produced the idea of work experience tasters as an effective mechanism to access the trust, along with personalised training for skills development. Working in partnership we have been able to develop a scheme that suits the needs of people we are trying to help, and to spread the word within communities."
The programme has been an unqualified success: some 458 people have been offered permanent jobs through the project which has a retention rate of 80%. Existing staff involved in the scheme have developed coaching and mentoring skills leading to NVQ accreditation.
Morris says the strategies are an example of pulling together the resources in a community to best serve members of that community.
"By reviewing training and employment patterns and identifying opportunities to employ local people and train them for jobs in the health service, the NHS can help the individual and make a direct contribution to community regeneration.
"As a team we are proud of what we have achieved with limited resources and will continue to develop the programmes locally as well as rolling out good practice nationally and regionally."
Runners-up
Sheffield city council's education directorate introduced an efficient business-like approach, which has been commercially very successful.
Southport and Ormskirk hospital trust demonstrated a strong commitment to diversity, reaching out to the potential workforce and showing a high rate of retention.
· The Guardian Public Services Award for recruitment and retention is sponsored by Tribal Resourcing
