Healthcare Support Workers: A Practical Guide for Training and Development

NHS support workers, such as nursing Healthcare Assistants, Maternity Support Workers, and Therapy Assistants, often provide the majority of face-to-face care to patients, clients and their families. This accessible guide explores the issues underpinning their recruitment, training, management, development and progression.

NHS support workers comprise four out of ten of the clinical workforce, yet despite their importance they have long faced barriers that mean they are not able to fully realise their potential. This is the first book to take a comprehensive look at this workforce, its history, the policy that shapes its recruitment, management and deployment, and explains clearly how their capacity and capability can be safely and effectively enhanced. Structured around the employment cycle, this text covers the introduction of Technical Levels, career changes, apprenticeships, recruitment and selection, informal learning, learning cultures, widening participation, supervision and functional skills. Providing practical, evidence-based guidance and including illustrative case studies, it suggests a range of interventions to overcome the long-standing barriers to the effective development and deployment of healthcare support workers.

Drawing on the latest research, and practice, including the author’s own experience, this book is an important resource for all those educating, managing or recruiting unregistered healthcare practitioners. It will also provide invaluable guidance to healthcare support workers interested in progressing their careers.

Richard Griffin is Professor of Healthcare Management at King’s Business School, King’s College London. He has worked in NHS workforce policy for over twenty years. Richard has previously worked for the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, the Department of Health and Social Care, and Health Education England. An author and co-author of over 200 reports, studies and articles, he was an advisor to the Cavendish Review, has undertaken extensive research into NHS clinical support roles and been involved, as an academic advisor, in national and regional workforce development programmes with both Health Education England and NHS England and Improvement. In 2015 he was awarded an MBE for services to health and social care.