Helping you boost your skills in 2020
A bit about my role
We support hundreds of you each year through our guidance and training events but we want to get better at providing this support and this is where my role comes in.
As the new learning and development manager, I have been tasked with creating a programme that helps you build the skills you have told us are most important to you.
Having spent three years managing Healthwatch County Durham I'm fortunate to have known some of you already and met even more of you during my first two months.
I am also fortunate enough to have lots of information about your priorities thanks to all of you who completed our learning needs survey earlier this year.
What can you expect?
Our learning and development programme will focus on delivering what you need to run an effective Healthwatch.
Thanks to the feedback you have given us we know our programme for you should focus on:
- Induction
- Understanding the health and social care landscape
- Effective and creative models of engagement
- Leadership and governance
- Volunteer management
- Impact and influence
- Communications and marketing
- Research and report writing skills
How will training be delivered?
You have told us that you would like to see more training outside of London. We also know that our move to offer more webinars, online learning modules and toolkits so that learning can fit in with busy schedules has been popular. You can expect to see even more of this in 2020.
Can you host training sessions for local Healthwatch?
If you have a central, accessible venue contact Marianne.Patterson@healthwatch.co.uk or hollie.pope@healthwatch.co.uk so that we can add you to our list of potential locations.
How does this fit with our wider support?
You may have heard that we have introduced a Quality Framework to help you demonstrate your effectiveness and showcase your impact. Our aim is to have every Healthwatch using it by March 2021.
Our learning and development support will be aligned with the Quality Framework so that we are providing you with comprehensive support to do your jobs. I intend to use the Quality Framework to develop the learning and development plan, to make sure we have a comprehensive support offer, as well as continuing to use feedback from the network.
What events and support do we currently have available?
- Find out more about the different training sessions that we have available here. We have training in different areas of communications, network meetings to share ideas and stay up to date with what's happening across the country, and CRM sessions to help you use this in the best way possible.
- We've a range of written guidance and resources available for you to use to support you in your job. We are constantly our guidance so be sure to visit this section of the site every now and then.
- We've a communications centre to help you develop branded products quick and easy.
- There is a page for new starters to find out information about the different areas of support, as well as an induction module.
- We launched our Making a Difference toolkit at conference and will be running five regional workshops looking at demonstrating impact, which isn’t always easy for a local Healthwatch as change isn’t always within our gift.
Are you signed up to Facebook Workplace?
If you aren't yet signed up, contact hub@healthwatch.co.uk with your details so that you can be set up with an account. This is the easiest way to stay up to date with what's going on across the network.
Learning and development you can take advantage of before 2020
We've had positive feedback about our online induction module, so do please share it with new staff and volunteers. We will be developing additional modules so be sure to watch out for those.
Our Policy team will be running a series of webinars, and some events, that cover various health and social care topics, and our Communications team have a whole programme coming up to help you with all aspects of communications and marketing.
Our Intelligence and Analytics team are also developing their Research Governance Framework and training modules. From April 2020 we will try to have a complete programme for the year ahead to help with your forward planning.
Other areas that we will be working on will be:
- to look at board governance for Chairs and board members
- models of engagement
- Enter and View guidance and training
- volunteer management
That's it from me! If you have any questions, please do get in touch. I hope to meet more of you soon.