Employing health care assistants - new toolkit available on RCN website
Published: 30 April 2008
A new toolkit aimed at supporting the employment of health care assistants is now live on the RCN website.
The toolkit makes the process of employing health care assistants much easier and is aimed at health care assistants themselves as well as their employers and other stakeholders such as primary care trusts, educationalists and patients.
It was originally developed by the Department of Health funded Working in Partnership Programme (WiPP) which was set up to create capacity within GP practices.
However, as WiPP completes its programme of work in June, the HCA toolkit has now been moved to the RCN which is extremely pleased to offer this new resource.
The RCN also plans to develop the toolkit to make it relevant for all clinical settings.
It was developed by WiPP for use within England but the principles and information would also be useful for those from the other UK countries.
The toolkit consists of a series of downloadable documents which:
- explain the role of health care assistants and what benefits they bring to health care teams
- provide a library of competences for HCAs – so they can develop and be managed within a competence framework
- give details of education and training opportunities for HCAs
- show how the health care assistant role can be integrated within the health care team
- provide an evaluation tool for assessing the success of employing HCAs
- provide guidance to help with the personal and professional development of HCAs
- give help with career planning and development for HCAs
- and provide comprehensive information on areas such as clinical governance, new ways of working and patient safety.
If you are a health care assistant seeking guidance in any of the areas above, an employer thinking about employing HCAs or if you have an interest in the HCA role and how it might benefit the health care team then go to www.rcn.org.uk/hcatoolkit