Care First 24 Ltd has developed a Preceptorship for Social Care, as we felt it essential to ensure the smooth transition of newly qualified nurses and those new to Social Care in the Home Care sector. We recently sent the information to Skills for Care, ICB’s and Universities, and there was a lot of interest.
Background Information
The Preceptorship has been established in Healthcare for several years, and research has shown the importance of this on retention. Simultaneously I, Jayne Easterbrook from Care First 24 Ltd, and Marisa Spice from Nellsar (a group of residential and nursing Care Homes), reached the same conclusion: This would be something that would be of value to social care, and help both to attract, recruit, and retain staff.
Jayne and Marisa had both begun to make connections with Healthcare Preceptor groups and came across each other. Having identified that we both worked in social care, in different areas, and are both based in Kent, we arranged to meet up and discuss how to implement this.
I have been fortunate to have been included in regular meetings with the NHS East of England Preceptorship network by Deborah Cubitt, which helped identify new research, guidance, and plans. Marisa has also been involved in external meetings and research. We were able to use this as a starting point for our discussion. We had both independently concluded that for this to work effectively in Social Care we would need to make some adaptations.
I had already begun writing some guidance and an overview of what we would require and happily shared this with Marisa. This was the beginning of our project, and working together became easier, as previously neither had anyone to discuss ideas with.
Together, we adjusted the original paperwork to make a basis for Preceptorship in social care. As we are from different areas – Marisa is Residential, and Jayne is Complex Care and Homecare in the community – we have had to make adaptations to meet the needs of our service.
Marisa has had more newly qualified staff than we have had since the project start, and is now ready to run her pilot project in more detail. She has added additional guidance and support based on more extensive feedback, that I will be employing in our organisation, where this is appropriate to the community.
Jayne had her first preceptee complete, and feedback from her and the preceptor has been vital for her in informing the next stage of home care. One of the main issues for us in the community is ensuring the preceptor has the time and support to meet the needs of the role and differentiating this from the everyday support and mentoring that the senior team provides for new staff. Care First 24 needs to be able to standardise the support for all new learners.
Ongoing
Both Jayne and Marisa’s work achievements to date have been attained by openly sharing their work and having honest discussions. They both perceive that this is in the best interest of the sector as a whole and want to continue to develop this by working together and discussing issues and feedback honestly with each other.
They comment:-
‘We want to share this with you, as we both feel this may be of interest. This project is still in the early stages. We have been working on this for over a year now, so sufficient work and thought have gone into this. Although we have had the opportunity to review all the information from the NHS Preceptorship, which has been essential, our work is very focused on social care needs.
We want to share our experience and our work more widely, as it may be of help to others.
We feel that a basic set of guidance and paperwork is based on best practice, so that others in social care can adapt this, regardless of the type and size of their organisation. This will hopefully support staff, who are newly qualified and new to the sector, to be retained in social care nursing.
With kind regards
Jayne (Care First 24) and Marisa (Nellsar)