Purpose
To build an integrated, place-based workforce with the shared skills, behaviours, and confidence needed to deliver seamless neighbourhood level care. The programme strengthens the “team around the person,” ensuring health and social care work as equal partners to improve outcomes and support sustainable careers.
Key aims:
- Develop inclusive, coherent career pathways across health and social care.
- Improve recruitment, retention, and workforce stability in neighbourhood teams.
- Build a flexible, multi‑skilled workforce able to work across boundaries.
- Embed social care as an equal partner in service design and workforce planning.
Strategic Drivers
- Integrated Neighbourhood Health Model: Workforce must mirror integrated care delivery to be effective.
- Workforce Retention & Supply: Persistent shortages require new models that create progression, stability, and shared capability.
- Equality, Inclusion & Fair Work: Social care workforce must have equal access to development, recognition, and career opportunities.
- System Workforce Strategy: Leeds requires coordinated workforce levers—not isolated initiatives—to strengthen neighbourhood care.
Approach
- Aligned Workforce Levers: Year 1 learning confirmed that workforce transformation succeeds when skills development, apprenticeships, leadership, clinical placements, and collaborative practice are connected, not siloed.
- Integrated Skills Development: Build shared, place-based skills and behaviours that allow staff to work across organisations and sectors.
- Career Pathway Mapping: Create clear, inclusive pathways that support entry, progression, and mobility across health and social care.
- Codesign with Social Care: Refocused to fully embed social care partners and strengthen parity of access and opportunity.
- Multiyear Delivery: Funded by the Rayne Foundation to June 2027, enabling sustainable, iterative improvements
Focus
- Shared Capability Across the Workforce: Develop transferable skills that support a unified neighbourhood team.
- Stronger Recruitment & Retention: Attract and keep people in roles through clearer pathways and better support.
- Inclusive and Accessible Careers: Ensure social care colleagues have equal access to development, recognition, and progression.
- Flexible, Multiskilled Workforce: Equip staff to respond to evolving models of care across settings.
Academy Role
- Accelerate Progress: Drive delivery across health and social care to strengthen integrated neighbourhood teams at pace.
- Connector: Connect apprenticeships, clinical placements, leadership development, and workforce planning into one coherent model.
- Catalyst: Turn Year 1 learning into actionable change, making shared skills and inclusive pathways the norm.
- Partnering: Work with Leeds City Council, LCH, VCSE and social care providers to ensure parity, access, and shared ownership.
- Innovating: Develop new place-based workforce approaches that allow staff to move, learn, and lead across sectors.
Expected Impact (Healthy Leeds Plan Alignment)
Healthy Communities | Fair Work | Integrated Care | Workforce Sustainability
- Clear, Inclusive Careers: Improved access to development and progression across health and social care.
- Stronger Recruitment & Retention: Stable neighbourhood teams with reduced turnover.
- Integrated Workforce Culture: Health and social care staff working as one team with shared behaviours and capabilities.
- Flexible, Multiskilled Workforce: Better able to meet local needs and adapt to changing models of care.
- Improved Care Experience: Stronger continuity and coordination for people receiving care.