HEE provides extra funding for midwifery clinical placements
on 28 August 2020
Health Education England (HEE) has pledged extra funding to support more clinical placements in the NHS for midwifery, nursing and allied health professions.
HEE has announced it will provide £15 million, a 50% increase on previously pledged funds, to support expansion across undergraduate programmes for these professions from September.
The money will become available through HEE’s Clinical Placement Expansion Programme.
Commenting on the funding, Head of Education at the Royal College of Midwives Camel Lloyd said: “We are pleased to see this investment, but it will be spread thinly across a lot of different professions, and we need to see the details of what it actually means on the ground. Clinical placements are a crucial part of the training for student midwives and increasing student numbers will require more clinical teachers and supervisors to support them in practice.
“We also need to ensure that more students in clinical placement do not put additional strain on stretched maternity services still dealing with the pandemic.”
The funding will be broken down which will see £8.2 million being allocated towards an additional 7,000 nursing and midwifery clinical placements across the country, and £5.6 million will go towards an additional 3,800 allied health profession placements and a further £1 million will be invested into sustainable technologies.
Interim Chief Executive for HEE, Professor Wendy Reid, said: “These young people are the future NHS workforce and we are committed to making sure there are career paths for them all. Providing placement opportunities is a key part of this and we want to provide support for students across all professions.
“It is vital that we can increase placement capacity by developing new placement networks that make more use of primary care settings, the PIVO sector (private, independent and voluntary organisation) and technology-based placements combined with alternative models of supervision.”
The funding has been awarded to hospital trusts, primary care providers and some training hubs across the country.