Dr. Rosie Gowran:

There will be a review by the NDA in relation to progressing disability services. It is in the planning phase at the moment. Obviously, the committee is aware of the roadmap and its 50 actions, which continue to be addressed. Regarding recruitment and retention and looking particularly at the CDNTs, from the clinical programme perspective, we are looking at issues in relation to practice education and to support students into practice education within the CDNTs. The evidence shows that if a person has experience working in an area, they are more likely to apply for a job in that area. It is critical that we encourage students across the country to get a practice education experience within the CDNTs. We have worked with the Department of Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, with representatives from the higher education institutes, HEI, and with CDNT managers and representatives from the disability services to develop a guidance for practice education. We also work with the National Health and Social Care Professions Office, HSCP, to utilise some of its resources for sustainable practice education.

The roadmap identified the need to support every student with a whole-time equivalent staff member or therapist. We do not want students to have a poor experience or for the practice educators to feel they are not supported in taking students. We have worked together to develop a guidance. Four key areas in relation to communication were identified, including communication with the HEIs and how they can support people to take students within CDNTs and create an information platform where people can communicate is important. We also looked at the different models of practice education such as one-to-one and two-to-one and project-based models. Obviously, they all have to align with the CORU standards in respect of people meeting the required competencies. There are a lot of examples of that so we have been working on collecting that kind of information. We will work with the HEIs to support the development of that within the guidance.

We are also looking at utilising some of the evaluation tools the HSCP office has developed. This will allow us to see how well things are working for the students, the practice educators and everybody involved. We also consider the infrastructure to support that so that we are not just developing a guidance that is making recommendations but that we are looking at administrative support in the system. We are hoping that this will be ready to roll out in Q 1 of 2025, so it is nearly finished. That is a really good piece.

There is also lots of development in relation to recruitment and retention, with a focus on that for CDNTs. Obviously, we are aware of the deficits in the system at the moment.