Health and Social Care Policy and the Interprofessional ... - CAIPE

protection’ (p7). Significantly the Group also recommends that ‘employers
should invest more in the workforce, in order to increase people's capacity to
adapt to new work organisations and circumstances’ (p23).
New jobs and new roles are emerging due to changes in society such as an
increased concern for the environment; living and working in a multicultural
society; an understanding of learning as a life long activity from cradle to
grave; diversifying health services and a dawning realisation that health and
social care are inextricably linked. Opportunities to forge closer partnerships
and networks in order to implement innovative practice are to be encouraged
as these ‘can lead to productivity gains which are more based on value
adding as against labour saving’ (p26).
To equip people for new ways of working the Group identifies the need to
address two different kinds of skills gaps: basic competences embedded in all
qualifications and occupational profiles (p26).
The Group clustered the competences required into three:
1. Personal competences: learning to learn; team working; networking;
creativity; entrepreneurship; leadership; defining a project.
2. Technical competences: PC user; Internet user; telecommunications
user; environment-friendly behaviour.
3. Theoretical competences: foreign languages; European and global
citizenship; scientific developments; understanding cultural diversity.
In Chapter 2, The UK Policy Agenda, the links between this EU work and the
UK Agenda for Change (AfC), Knowledge and Skills Framework (KSF) and
National Occupational Standards (NOS) are explored.
Calling for the acquisition of broad basic skills and an ability to adapt and
learn the Group linked this with the need for life-long learning and personal
development opportunities. A subsequent policy recommendation returned to
this theme emphasising the need to support the creation of networks of
services validating and certifying the outcome of informal learning activities
(p49).
While the general remit of the Group does not focus specifically on the
interprofessional workforce they imply that in view of the rapid increase in
health care expenditure as well as a need for greater efficiency and quality, ‘a
better coordination of the actors can improve the efficiency of health supply’
(p56), the actors in this case including everyone from Government to the
interprofessional workforce in practice. In order to meet the social inclusion
and social protection agenda the High Level Group recommends that health
care is explicitly included in all aspects of the different policy strands (p55).
Further policy recommendations of relevance to the Creating an
Interprofessional Workforce Programme include the need to ‘promote
affordable quality services in particular for long-term care of elderly people
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