EXCLUSIVE: Developing the next generation of health, housing, and social care professionals

Andy Hart, the head of technical delivery and support at Tunstall Healthcare, discusses why developing the next generation of health, housing, and social care professionals is important to ensure that population health is at the heart of our health, housing, and social care systems.

As the population grows, care services need to adapt to the requirements of different communities within our population and evolve accordingly. In recent years, services have begun to move towards a more proactive and predictive mode of care, which is more effective and efficient for all citizens.

As we continue to develop the next generation of care provision, training and development programmes will play a crucial role in enabling professionals to become more forward thinking and digital-first.

Ensuring access to digital products that aid effective care delivery and training programmes to improve the skills needed to deploy, manage, and analyse digital solutions will help to reduce pressures on across the health, social care and housing landscape. By digitally upskilling the next generation of care professionals through education and development, we will contribute to a positive transformation of services that will create a better future for us all.

The benefits of training and development

In order to ensure longevity of quality caregiving, health, housing and social care providers may want to consider comprehensive training that encourages investment in new technology-enabled care services (TECS). Better education and digital products and services will contribute to an alleviation of certain pressure points that are currently being felt and make processes much more streamlined.

While training and development may require investment in the first instance, the upskilling of the workforce will improve wellbeing, support better care delivery, and drive cost savings. Consideration of these long-term benefits will help to justify the short-term costs when it comes to developing education and training initiatives. This is echoed across organisations, with a recent report citing that over nine out of 10 directors of adult social care services indicated that they view investment in assistive and communications technology as a crucial step in ultimately delivering on savings priorities.

Health, housing, and social care services have a range of key objectives including improving the health and wellbeing outcomes of our population, putting citizens at the heart of decisions made about them and their care, and allowing people to live independently in a place of their choice for as long as possible.

Effective training can support professionals in achieving these goals by being better equipped to listen to the people they care for and understand their everyday needs. This, in turn, will give them the knowledge they need to recognise the care solutions, including technology options that will be the most effective for each individual.

Investing in digital training for the next generation of health, housing, and social care professionals is the natural progression in the face of the digitalisation of the industry, which also offers a unique opportunity for person-centred care on a wide scale, ensuring root-and-branch change.

The changing landscape

As with all digital products, TECS are ever-evolving and it must be an ongoing strategy to ensure everyone working across the health and care landscape is provided with the right skills and knowledge to maximise the technology solutions that are available and continue to be developed.

The earlier that we can adopt and integrate technology as part of care delivery programmes, the better placed we’ll be to equip the workforce with the know-how to implement digital tools, manage caseloads and instil understanding that will resonate as technology becomes more advanced.

While we continue to experience significant vacancies within services, digital transformation offers a new opportunity to support professionals still working within our health, social care, and housing services by streamlining processes and allowing targeted care where and when it really matters. This in turn will reduce burnout and encourage more people to consider a career within care services as aspirational and rewarding.

We need to be able to shape a system that is better able to serve people in such a fast-changing world. Whether it’s the use of virtual care platforms, remote monitoring solutions, communication tools, digital apps or sophisticated data platforms, services are entering a new phase of digital maturity.

TECS have a role to play in driving recruitment and talent to health, housing, and social care, as it continues to innovate and the benefits of digitised systems are realised. A growing and ageing population will lead to an increase in the demands on our services and the requirement of professionals to support and manage vulnerable people. TECS are vital in managing this.

Using technology within training

It’s important for technology providers to work closely with local authorities, health, housing, and social care professionals to consider how TECS can support care delivery. If technology providers continue to promote the benefits of embedding TECS into both training programmes and initiatives, but also into professional care delivery, everyone will begin to reap the benefits, from the workforce to citizens.

The more people that have an understanding of how TECS can help to manage risks and promote independence, choice, and control, the better.

It’s not only about the hardware solutions that are available and how to successfully integrate them. Education, when combined with technology can improve understanding around the value of data, enable more creative thinking with how it’s used, and encourage confidence in communicating with citizens why data sharing is important.

There are, of course, some misapprehensions that still need to be addressed when it comes to the use of technology within health, housing, and social care. By supporting professionals through education and training, we will develop a workforce that sees technology as an enabler to support them, not to replace them. This, in turn, will create a world where it’s standard practice to use assistive technology to manage health conditions remotely and deliver efficient and personalised care.

For more information, visit www.tunstall.co.uk.