CLCH receive silver award for quality of work experience from NHS England

The Work Experience team are extremely proud to have been awarded the Silver Quality Standard award from NHS England following a successful pilot of its new work experience program in 2023.  The award is thanks to over 50 mentees and 30 teams all collaborating to deliver a high-quality work experience programme and continuously developing the offer. At the end of the summer, the work experience team provided evidence to NHS England across three key areas: planning, delivery, and evaluation of placements.

The success of the project came after months of developing, trialling, and tweaking a suite of induction materials, feedback from staff and learners and process documentation. The team have worked hard to balance the need to deliver high quality placement experiences with the challenges of front-line teams’ capacity. The result is an efficient, safe model which empowers teams to host mentees locally with centralised support and minimum paperwork involved.

Charlie Sheldon, Chief Nursing Officer at CLCH said; “Positive work experience can be instrumental in kick-starting the careers of our future health professionals, so we are proud to receive this accolade from NHS England. We look forward to welcoming many more young people onto this programme to learn about the valuable contribution of community healthcare and its vital role in the wider NHS”.

“We are grateful to all teams at the Trust who have helped us refine this process and those who continue to host placements.

The NHS England Quality Award provides applicants and organisations assurance that the work experience CLCH offers reaches the highest possible standards. The award also signals a move towards higher consistency and standardisation of placements on offer throughout the country.

If you are interested in a career in community healthcare and the NHS, there are plenty of opportunities coming up in 2024.

In order to be eligible for this work experience placement, applicants must be:

- Aged 14+ (16+ for clinical placements)

- Be living, working or studying in the boroughs our services operate in

This minimum criteria ensures we are playing an active role in widening access to employment for the communities we support.

Please get in touch with the team at clcht.workexperience@nhs.net to find out more about hosting a placement and register your interest.