Learning & Development Blog by Mike Lakins - July 2018
First and foremost this month I’d like to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who sent good wishes to me following my recent promotion to Head of Learning & Development for the Springhill Care Group. I’m really looking forward to the challenge and to the opportunity of sharing and rolling out some new ideas.
I would like to welcome Sophie McIntosh to the Learning and Development Team; Sophie has been appointed as the new Learning & Development Co-ordinator at Springhill Care Home. Sophie is scheduled to start mid-July and brings with her a lot of health & social care experience having worked with us in a training provider capacity for a number of years – welcome aboard Sophie.
It’s been an interesting month as I have been involved in a number of exciting meetings and last week I was invited to attend the Hyndburn Business Awards in Accrington. Springhill Care Home was one of the finalists; we didn’t win overall in our category for Large Business, but having reached that final stage was an achievement in itself.
We are closer to announcing the date when the Associate Nurse/ Assistant Practitioner courses start; its long awaited and I would like to thank the staff involved for their patience – we continue to work closely with the University of Central Lancashire to ensure that when we roll out the Nurse Pathway it proves to be a seamless transition from Assistant Practitioner to enrolment onto the Nurse Apprenticeship.
I am planning to roll out an End of Life level 2 qualification around August and have had a good response from staff wanting to complete this. This qualification will be completed as a distance learning module and will provide additional underpinning knowledge to all staff improving and developing them through training and mentoring.
Jakki Whitehead, our Admiral Nurse at Riversway Nursing Home in Bristol spent time with me during this month too; it was a pleasure to meet up with her and Jakki shared some fantastic information around the subject of dementia that she has developed. We are planning to roll out her bespoke dementia training in the next couple of months to the staff here at Springhill Care Home, Accrington.
Lowry training have signed up a number staff this month to complete their level 2 and level 3 Diplomas in Health and Social Care – and progress is steadily being made.
At Springhill we understand that the learning and development of staff is crucial and the opportunities that we offer everyone to improve and develop are plentiful; if anyone has any training requirements, please do not hesitate to contact me to discuss them further.
I am looking forward to meeting everyone at our other services and building on our exciting learning and development plans for the continued success of our organisation.
Mike Lakins
Head of Learning and Development