Career Pathways for Social Care Staff
What are Career Pathways
The overall vision is of a modernised service provider in which staff have a range of options for developing and extending their careers, supported by the provision of excellent learning and training opportunities.
Objectives
- Attracting people to work with us by offering them career pathways and training opportunities
- Giving staff the opportunity to move forward within the pathway through encouraging them to extend their current skills and knowledge, which in turn should provide them with a stimulating careers.
Benefits
- The Career Pathway represents a model for seeing real change in the delivery of services to the people who live work and raise a family in County Durham by enhancing the skills and motivation of staff who deliver these services.
- The Pathway brings together a number of key strategies for changing the way in which we currently work. It links together lifelong learning with recruitment & retention and the workforce planning strategy - in doing so the pathway is key in growing and changing the existing workforce.
- The Pathway also opens up routes into employment within both Children and Young People's Service and Adult and Community Services for local people.
- The Pathway also contributes to the wider agenda around ‘Every Child Matters’, ‘Investing to Save’, ‘Our Health, Our Care, Our Say; a new direction for community services‘, ‘Valuing People‘ and ‘Options for Excellence‘ initiatives developing the workforce to change, adapt and work differently.
- As well as formalising the existing Induction Programme in place, the pathway makes sure that new starters are presented with immediate clarity in terms of the training and development opportunities available
- The Pathway allows for flexibility within roles. Role redesign is an integral part of service redesign and involves redesigning roles ‘staff working differently’ and creating new ones. It can involve expanding the breadth and depth of roles, moving tasks up or down a traditional uni-disciplinary ladder and crossing professional, skill mix and organisational boundaries. It is very important that role-redesign is shaped and determined around service users needs.
