Nursing and Maternity

The healthcare system is increasingly reliant on its nursing workforce, with nursing expansion, development and new ways of working at the forefront of current NHS planning.

Our aim is to support the current and future nursing workforce by growing the range of entry routes, career pathways and portfolio careers for the nursing profession. We will do this by ensuring inclusive education, training and leadership opportunities for students and learners. We also want to enable the workforce and its leaders to better reflect the diversity of the local population, and make the best use of digital technology.

Our regional nursing team priorities for 2021/22 aims to:

• Grow the nursing workforce in the SE as a part of the national aim to deliver 50,000 more nurses in health and care by March 2024.

• Increase placement capacity and optimise usage by widening the range of learning environments available.

• Support graduates in their early clinical careers recover from the pandemic thereby contributing to system recovery.

• Secure a future nursing workforce by supporting

The healthcare system is increasingly reliant on its nursing workforce, with nursing expansion, development and new ways of working at the forefront of current NHS planning.

HEE is working with the system across Wessex to:

* develop pathway routes into nursing that are flexible

* increase the number and supply of nurses

* widen participation in the nursing profession

* enable new routes including nursing degree apprenticeships and new roles including nursing associates

* encourage nurses to return to practice

* inspire the next workforce generation through nursing and midwifery ambassadors

* engage with student nurses as key stakeholders more effectively

* expand clinical placement opportunities

Please see our General Practice Nursing page for further information.

The maternity profession includes, but is not limited to, the following highly trained professionals across maternity services: midwives, maternity support workers, neonatal nurses, and medical workforce including fetal medicine, obstetricians, anaesthetists, GPs, neonatologists.

Our regional vision is to have a current and future maternity workforce with the right skills in the right place to deliver high quality maternity care, supporting the maternity workforce to play its important role in improving population health across the SE.

Our regional maternity programmes priorities for 2021/22 aims to:

• Develop a sustainable and collaborative culture across maternity to support service transformation.

• Support the current and future maternity workforce by helping alignment to the new ways of working and future service design.

• Support the development of the future maternity and neonatal workforce through changes to ways of working to enable smooth transition to future service design.

• Collaborate with our stakeholders to increase the supply of the maternity workforce, by providing more opportunities and pathway.

Other work

Maternity and neonatal care has been the focus of several reviews over the last few years including:

Better Births 2016 – Improving outcomes of maternity services in England

Maternity Workforce Strategy 2019 – Transforming the Maternity Workforce

Implementing the Recommendations  of the Neonatal Critical Care Review 2019

In addition, the Long Term Plan aims to halve neonatal deaths by 2025. These documents are forming the basis of HEE work, both nationally and locally. Registered midwife expansion, continuity of carer for pregnant women and maternity support worker development are examples of areas which are a focal point of development. The Local Maternity System are leading and supporting the implementation of Better Births. The Maternity Support Worker Competency, Education and Career Development Framework supports the role development of this group.