manchester university nhs foundation trust
We aim to increase and diversify our workforce through supporting our local communities to gain relevant and meaningful experience.
| Sector |
Health and social care |
| UK Workforce | c. 28,000 |
| Placement Model | Work Experience, Pre-employment Programme, Supported Internships, and Traineeships |
| Funding Source |
Mix of core funding and external funding. |
We aim to increase and diversify our workforce (including the wider health and social care workforce) through supporting our local communities to gain relevant and meaningful experience.
We are passionate about this because:
- More diverse and representative workforce reflecting the community we serve, ultimately improving patient care (MFT Diversity Matters Strategy)
- Improve social mobility – ability not background
- Links between health and deprivation factors (unemployment, low income etc) – good jobs for local people
- One of the largest employers in Manchester local authority – civic duty
- ‘Grown your own’ model – short and long term recruitment challenges
- High return on investment – savings on recruitment (and wages!), improved retention
- NHS Workforce Disability Equality Standard and Racial Equality Standard and NHS People Plan
We host the following programmes:
Work experience – we offer work experience to our local communities to support them in their decision-making and current and future study. We offer a mix of individual placements and structured programmes and provide support to our local colleges with placements for BTEC and T-level students. Since the pandemic all of our opportunities have taken place either online or in school or college.
Pre-employment programme – we work with The Manchester College who deliver a 2-4 week training programme followed by a 5 week work placement. We are currently offering Kickstart opportunities as an extension to our pre-employment SBWA.
Supported Internships – we work with North Ridge High School, The Manchester College, Trafford College and Pure Innovations to deliver the supported internship programme for 16-24 year old with an EHCP.
Traineeships – we have recently piloted traineeships in Pharmacy and are planning how to increase this provision.
We support around 100 people each year via our pre-employment programme, host around 40 supported interns and pre-pandemic supported over 650 work experience placements.
In 20-21 94% of our pre-employment students gained employment following the programme.
