RCOT is calling on all practitioners, service managers and departmental leads to work creatively and collaboratively with neighbouring Universities delivering pre-registration occupational therapy programmes to explore what you can do to support students to access the placements.
Many practice placements were postponed or lost entirely as all four nations of the UK shifted focus to respond to the global pandemic. Students have been asked to step up and move into the workforce through pre-graduate Band 5 roles via the temporary HCPC register, and through employment in Band 3 roles alongside an amended programme of academic studies. Great work has been, and continues to be, done by these students. They have been particularly selfless as the net effect for a great many, will be a delay in their graduation and entry into the professional workforce.
A substantial ‘backlog’ has developed, which will add to the ‘business as usual’, and even growth, demand for placements going forward. RCOT has worked with education providers to explore how the required 1,000 hours of successful practice-based learning might reasonably be calculated within the requirements set out by the World Federation of Occupational Therapists. This will help to ease the pressures on our colleagues in practice, but we are calling for everyone to do what they reasonably can to ensure that we have the future workforce available to meet the rapidly increasing demand for occupational therapy services.
If everyone does something small to help, the net result could be substantial. Local programme teams will be more than happy to discuss various models of supervision that might be appropriate for you and your team, so please don’t feel that you must adopt the traditional 1:1 approach. You will be supported to develop your skills and confidence if you have not taken a student before, or for a while, as well as throughout the period of any student’s placement with you or your team.
While work is done to ensure they routinely have access to death in service cover, in England over the next two or three months, Health Education England (HEE) has a particular focus on ensuring that students undertake placements under a contract of employment. They will remain students on placement, but the contract will mean that they are on ‘paid placements’ which will allow contributions to individual pension pot and ensure death in service cover. More information on this can be found here.
The treasury has guaranteed additional finances to support these paid placements, and this has been communicated to Trust Directors of Finance. More information on this can be found here:
Details of the mechanisms for securing contracts are still being developed, but they will apply to all students in England, regardless of whether they are going into NHS, social care or PVI placement environments. HEE is currently working to identify a lead employer in each region who will ‘host’ contracts for students going into non-NHS placement environments. Universities will be working closely with HEE Regional Allied Heath Professions (AHP) Leads to ensure they are well-informed as details emerge and some local solutions are already evident (e.g. in the South West, the CCG is acting as lead employer).
Practitioners, service managers and departmental leads working in NHS Trusts are encouraged to seek out the person in their HR department who lead on setting up paid placements for nursing students during March and April, as they will be enormously helpful in facilitating the same or occupational therapy students, and AHP students more broadly.
HEE are working hard to clarify detail and mechanisms, and RCOT acknowledges that this still-unfolding initiative is complex in a time when complexity abounds in many aspects of our lives. Nevertheless, we call upon colleagues to join the collective effort to ensure that we are able to support pre-registration students to complete their programmes of study as close to the originally intended graduation date as reasonably possible. This will sustain the workforce supply pipeline and bring skilled, competent graduates to the workplace to join you in taking on the challenges and opportunities that the health and care landscape presents to us all as we move through and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
See alternative models for delivering student practice placements here.