Development opportunities

Developing your career - supporting you to be your best

At Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust (NSFT), our goal is to deliver high-quality education and training opportunities, ensuring the best care for our service users. We are dedicated to developing our staff and fostering collaboration to continuously enhance everything we do.

We offer exciting and innovative in-house programs, many of which utilise a blended approach combining face-to-face and online learning. These programs are designed to upskill and support the personal and professional growth of our workforce.

Our Education Strategy Group (ESG) plays a pivotal role in providing strategic oversight of the Trust’s education and development initiatives. Its primary aim is to ensure that these offerings are closely aligned with the Trust’s service delivery goals, as well as its broader strategic objectives and priorities.

Meeting on a monthly basis, the ESG operates within the framework of fostering cultural transformation across the organisation. The group is committed to enhancing access to training for all staff, strengthening support systems, and promoting equity and transparency in the approach to education and professional development.

Developing you

Our Learning and Development Prospectus outlines the wide range of training and learning opportunities available to all staff at NSFT.

A few examples of what training programmes we currently offer:

Trust Induction
StatMand Training (Mandatory and Statutory Training)
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) – We offer extensive programmes to enhance self-learning, refresh knowledge, and update skills, including both clinical and non-clinical development opportunities, as well as external training for all staff.
Conferences, Learning Summits and Roadshows
Apprenticeships
Leadership Development programmes
Psychological Therapies Training
Recovery college
Health and Wellbeing resources
Research and development programmes.
Legal services Training
Knowledge and Understanding Framework (KUF) Training
Quality improvement Training
Finance Training
IT Training & Systems training
Retirement planning

Practice Education Team

Norfolk & Suffolk Foundation Trust (NSFT) has a dedicated team of Practice Education Facilitators (PEFs) working across the organisation to provide clinical education support within each locality.

The main role of the PEF Team is to ensure the provision of high-quality learning environments for all pre-registration learners within NSFT, as well as supporting post registration to support the transition to confident, professionally registered colleagues.

As a team we support Practice Supervisors, Practice Assessors and Practice Educators to facilitate high quality clinical learning environments in line with NMC, HCPC and Social Work England standards and expectations, working closely with several Higher Education Institution (HEI) partners.

We are proud to offer our learners varied opportunities throughout placement, including spoke days, learning sessions with subject matter experts and opportunities for facilitated reflection.

Preceptorship

Preceptorship is a period to guide, develop and support all newly registered practitioners to build confidence and competence as they transition from student to autonomous professional.

NHS England

At NSFT the Practice Education Team are proud to offer a year-long supportive Preceptorship Programme, comprising:

Allocation of a Preceptor to act as a professional role model and provide support and guidance throughout the Preceptorship period
Allocation of a Practice Education Facilitator to act in an additional supportive role
Facilitated learning sessions hosted by the Practice Education Team, featuring subject matter experts
Facilitated reflection sessions

Talent for Care Team

Our work spans education and organisational development and is derived from the Talent for Care (TFC) strategy (Health Education England, 2014), fittinginto the four themes, “Get ready, Get into, Get on, Go further!”

We support staff to access apprenticeships and co-ordinate the development programmes including preceptorship for newly-qualified assistant practitioners and our medication management programme for assistant practitioners and allied health professionals. We are very proud to have a range of apprenticeships available to develop staff to be the best they can be at their job and help them realise career aspirations into professions or managerial roles.

We help staff access national programmes such as traineeships, T-levels, work experience. We work with the local Department for Work and Pensions and job centres to provide work placement programmes, supporting local people to find jobs, enabling them to gain the skills they need to get jobs and providing targeted help for young people to get into work.