RCN health care assistants and assistant practitioners - caring for you while you are caring for others

At the RCN we want to make sure that health care assistants (HCAs) and assistant practitioners (APs) are recognised as valued members of the RCN and the nursing team. Although there are a wide range of titles used in these roles, we have chosen to encompass all of these under the titles HCA and AP.

Message from your HCA Adviser - Tanis Hand

Tanis Hand

Welcome to the RCN HCA and AP website.

This section of the RCN website contains a great deal of information relevant to HCAs, APs and also nurses who work with their HCA and AP colleagues. First Steps for HCAs, the outstanding resource covering induction topics for HCAs, that has proven to be really useful for HCAs, APs and students too was launched a year ago. We have decided to run another series of webinars about First Steps, working through it section by section, so that people can see how it works and how to best make use of it.

The webinars are on:

Thursday 23 February 2012, 12 noon-1pm
Thursday 1 March 2012, 1-2pm
Tuesday 6 March 2012, 1-2pm.

All you need is a telephone and a computer connected to the internet. For more information and to book a session, please email mirka.ferdosian@rcn.org.uk.

We keep our website up to date so that you can have access to the most recent information on topics such as regulation, accountability and events. Do take the time to have a look around our site and if you have a story to tell we want to hear from you at hca@rcn.org.uk

Regulation update

You may have read in the press that the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, is setting out his plans for a system of assured voluntary registration for health care support workers and adult social care workers in England.

What will this mean for you? If the proposals go through there will be work done by Skills for Health and Skills for Care (together with unions, employers and others) to develop a code of conduct and minimum training standards for HCAs in England.

This work should be completed by September 2012 and then during 2013 voluntary register(s) will be established, using these training standards as part of their criteria for inclusion on a register.

We believe that statutory regulation remains the best approach for both the public and HCAs and APs.

Could your colleagues benefit?

Membership of the RCN now costs just £4.06 per month for HCAs and APs for the first year. This is significantly less than Unison unless you earn less than £5,000 per year. Plus you can claim tax relief on 100 per cent of your membership fees.

Why not tell your colleagues about this fantastic offer and the huge range of benefits that come with being a member of the RCN? Find out more and urge your friends to visit www.rcn.org.uk/hca_membership_benefits

And don’t forget to show your friends and colleagues our film on accountability and delegation, and the ground-breaking First Steps for HCAs induction resource.

First steps for health care assistants. This is a web-based learning resource designed to assist HCAs and their employers by providing the core information that should be covered in induction.

First steps has been shortlisted for excellence in the production of learning content - not for profit sector 2011.

Accountability and delegation: What you need to know with accompanying leaflets and a delegation checklist. This is useful for the whole of the nursing team and will help to dispel myths about accountability and delegation.