Workforce data, planning and transformation

Occupational Therapy 

‘The change curve was most helpful. It highlighted that different team members are at different stages at different times throughout the process. This allowed the change to be much more effectively managed. The uniqueness exercise proved to be the most challenging and we found defining our core business to be challenging.’ 

Speech and Language Therapy 

They looked at the potential service user journeys, speech and language therapy interventions and the core skills required. Dysphagia management was a major requirement and therefore, as this requires a post-graduate qualification and expertise, a Band 6 therapist would be likely to have the appropriate training and experience needed for this work. Following advertisement the service was unable to recruit to a Band 6 post as there was no suitable applicant, so they considered three core questions about the service: 

• Was there a role for an assistant? 
• Could a Band 5 do the job? 
• Was it an option to increase the number of sessions of an existing Band 7 post? 

They then looked flexibly at their service, and a vacancy elsewhere in the service provided allowed a small service redesign. 

They made their Band 7 full-time, which gave them a therapist with the necessary skills and competencies. This decision then left 23 hours at Band 5 which have subsequently been filled. Since this time, they have also revised their dysphagia training programme for Band 5 speech and language therapists and they now do this as soon as possible after appointment to post. This allows practitioners to develop their dysphagia skills at an earlier stage and to benefit both service user care and the service delivery across all sites.