Health Education England (HEE) invested in a project designed to develop a number of Allied Health Professional (AHP) Faculty Test Beds across England. The project supported the delivery of HEE's 2019 Mandate to 'Develop a pipeline of Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) by increasing applications to undergraduate AHP education and developing AHP faculties to work with providers to identify how to expand clinical placement capacity, whilst also supporting continuing education and training of AHPs in current practice, including the development of advance practice roles'.
It also supported HEE's wider remit set out in the NHS Long Term Plan (LTP) which required working with the higher education sector, local healthcare providers and national bodies not only to increase the number of AHPs in education and training across the system (new applicants and additional placement capacity), but also in terms of improving trainee and staff retention.
As a result, HEE funded 24 STP/ICS Faculty Test Beds with the aim to establish an AHP Faculty and to start work on at least one of the following workforce development projects:
ARU, Rethink Partners and Economics By Design were commissioned to work together to provide a formative evaluation of the Test Beds to help inform improvement, spread and adoption of these faculties.
The evaluation used mixed-methods research to identify early lessons on the processes, impact and economic value through a review of the faculty models, objectives and outcomes and through discovery interviews.
27 April – 31 August 2020