From job centre to healthcare worker: How Leeds training programme is helping people take steps into the NHS

When we speak over the phone on a dreary day late in January, Jolene is waiting patiently to start a new role as an apprentice healthcare support worker.

Once the paperwork is finalised, she’s due to be based with the Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, working with four patients in the Cross Gates area of Leeds.

The trust provides mental health and learning disability services across the city and 40-year-old Jolene is looking forward to playing her part.

“I just want to help people and make a difference in people’s lives,” she says.

“Caring is something I’m really passionate about, it’s something I’ve done throughout my life and it just comes naturally to me. People seem to warm to me fast.”

In recent months, Jolene has helped to look after her father, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

Her mother has struggled with mental health issues since Jolene was a girl.

As her daughter, Jolene is well-versed on helping her to manage bipolar disorder and OCD.

“Say she’s slept in late one morning and that’s messed with her daily rituals, she’ll ring me up all flustered and I know how to calm her down,” she says.

“I help explain to her that the fact she’s up late isn’t going to affect anything or anyone, it will be fine. I’ve learnt how to deal with her mental health over the years.”

It is against this backdrop that last year, Jolene applied to take part in a new programme, designed to empower people to become healthcare workers. She’d previously had a number of part-time cleaning jobs but was looking for something “more rewarding”.

So when she heard through her local job centre about the Leeds-based programme being run by education-to-employment charity Generation UK, she decided to apply.

It took place for the first time from September last year, running online over three weeks.

The first cohort of 25 participants learnt about safeguarding, how to deal with a range of situations in healthcare and community care and how to stand out in job applications with one-to-one career coaching and practice interviews.

Employees across Leeds hospitals and community and mental healthcare services spoke to leaners about their job roles and working in the sector more broadly and the programme’s link with NHS trusts meant that after the three weeks, people on the scheme were given support with applications, interviews and assessments to help them secure positions, filling staff vacancies.

Jess Sewter, Generation UK’s Partnerships Director in Leeds, says the majority of the organisation’s programmes are designed to fill skill gaps in the technology sector.

But this new scheme was focused around filling some of the staffing and skills shortages in the NHS.

“This is a new sector for us really,” she says. “But then because jobs were really in demand in the healthcare sector, we designed this programme.

“It trains people to become healthcare support workers and we focused on clinical support in hospitals but also community support workers as well.

“The focus for Generation up until that point had been on youth unemployment so our learners ranged from 18 to 29 years.

“However, because the pandemic had seen so many people over 30 furloughed and there was lots of people unemployed and that situation was worsening, and also because we felt that healthcare would appeal as a career path to people later in life, we lifted the age cap for the first time.

“Over half of our learners were over 30 and a lot of them did say they had cared for others through most of their lives, whether that be children or elderly relatives.”

Lindsey White joined the programme from a care background. The 42-year-old had previously worked as a carer in nursing homes and as a care assistant on mental health wards, through an agency.

But she had wanted to join the NHS for some time and has considered a career in nursing. She has recently done some work through the staff bank at Leeds Teaching Hospitals but prior to that had periods off work or out of work, predominantly due to mental health issues.

She found out about Generation’s healthcare course through her local job centre. “The programme is brilliant for confidence building, motivation, helping you find the things that you are good at - and helping you find the things that you’re not good at and doing so in a constructive way,” says Lindsey, who lives in Beeston. “By the time I got to the interview [for a job], I wasn’t worried.”

One of the biggest benefits of the course for Lindsey was learning how to fill in an NHS application form; she had applied, unsuccessfully, to the organisation in the past but now has a provisional offer to join an elderly urgent care ward at St James’s Hospital as an apprentice healthcare assistant and when we spoke, was waiting for her paperwork in order to get started.

“I’m chuffed to bits about that and chomping at the bit to get there,” she says. “Being on the course and speaking to people from within the NHS is priceless. It’s helped me realise I can carry on learning and go further and that’s incredibly exciting.”

Following the success of the course - Generation says 60 per cent of the cohort are already placed in a healthcare role and the remaining 40 per cent are at interview stage for other care roles across the region, there are plans to run the programme again twice this year, partnering with Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

“Even now I still get regular emails asking if I’m okay, how the process is going, can they help with anything?” Lindsey says. “It’s been absolutely fantastic.”

Jolene, who lives in Wortley, is now encouraging her 20-year-old daughter to apply for the next programme, running from March, as she too hopes for a career in the health sector. For Jolene, the goal now is to do a healthcare degree and specialise in mental health.

“The course gives you a lot of knowledge, preparing you for going into the workplace,” she says. “It’s given me a real confidence boost.

The next programme, designed to equip people to become apprentice healthcare support workers, will start on March 28 and is open to people aged 18 and over living in West Yorkshire, Harrogate, York, Selby or Barnsley, who are not currently in education, training or employment.

To apply, visit uk.generation.org/yorkshire/get-into-healthcare/

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