Home / The Plan / History of the Plan 2015-2020 / Career Development
An easily understood career pathway helps current and future Kaiāwhina make choices about training and potential roles to pursue. The pathway enables workers to enter the sector, progress to leadership roles and to the regulated workforce depending on their career aspirations. Skills and knowledge will be transferable and recognised within the NZ qualifications framework.
All of the eight actions in this domain have been completed.
Following the Tertiary Review of Qualifications (TRoQ) of 2010/14, a revised Level 2-6 qualification and associated career pathway was implemented. As a result, Kaiāwhina have been able to work through the new Health and Wellbeing Levels 2-6 New Zealand qualifications. Work has also occurred to recognise the existing knowledge, attributes and skills Kaiāwhina already have as they embark on their formal qualifications process.
Regular career expos and engagement events promote vocational pathways. School students are provided with insight into Kaiāwhina roles via Gateway packages and opportunities for structured workplace learning where they gain knowledge and practical skills in the aged care, health and wellbeing, disability and social and community sectors. If a student then moves into the health sector, they have already gained valuable credits toward their first Health and Wellbeing Level 2 qualification.
The apprenticeship programme launched by Careerforce in 2016/17 and developed by and for the sector, provides Kaiāwhina working in various settings with the opportunity to build on and improve their technical skills and knowledge and develop their critical thinking, reflective practice and expand their ‘toolkit’. For Kaiāwhina this means that they can continue on-job learning in the health, disability, mental health, aged support, rehabilitation, social and community services. Staff can earn while they learn, gain nationally recognised qualifications, support more complex health conditions and handle challenging social issues, resulting in better health outcomes for the New Zealand community.
In response to sector demand, Careerforce launched a programme (July 2017) to support the achievement of NZQA business qualifications (Levels 4 to 6), aimed at current leaders and managers in the health and disability sectors with a focus on building core management and leadership knowledge and capability. A strength of this programme is that the employee’s current skills, experience and knowledge are recognised with the learning building from this foundation. Leaders and managers are able to adapt modern business practice tools and strategies into their own workplace setting. In addition to the Careerforce programme a range of Level 6 & 7+ qualifications are offered by Institutes of Technology, Polytechnics, Wānanga and Universities thus providing choices for those Kaiāwhina wishing to pursue a career in leadership and management.
The NZQA database provides a nationally structured mechanism for recording learner progress, using a unique national student number (NSN) for each student. This system allows progress to be tracked at an individual Kaiāwhina level during their learning journey and once their qualification is completed. This provides Kaiāwhina with recognition of their skills and knowledge when they change employer and apply for and/or commence in a new role anywhere in New Zealand. The system provides transparency of nationally recognised qualifications and a place for any new qualifications to be moderated, approved and included on the framework.
The actions in the Career Development Domain of the Kaiāwhina Workforce Action Plan 2015-2020 were completed in 2016 and 2017. Since that time there has been on-going development/quality improvement across the actions to ensure that the learning Kaiāwhina are doing remains relevant, up to date in content, accessible and is appropriately preparing Kaiāwhina to respond to the employment market demand.
The importance of career development and progression for Kaiāwhina will continue to be a priority area for stakeholders and funders. This will include the challenges of addressing capacity and capability to meet new models of care, changing population demands and service delivery.
This aligns with the Kaiāwhina Workforce Taskforce 2020-2025 Priority 5: Supplying and developing the workforce
Sector oversight of leadership development continues to be provided by the Health Workforce Advisory Board and the 20 DHB Workforce Strategy Group (WSG) with Kaiāwhina being given opportunities to participate in leadership and management programmes continuing to be encouraged. The WSG is working with the State Service Commission’s leadership and talent management programme. In addition, the Health Quality and Safety Commission continues to promote capability development and leadership in quality improvement and patient safety via the Knowledge to Action Framework.
The continuing challenge of skills shortages across the health and disability sector has been amplified during COVID-19 with increased numbers needed for the “surge” workforce. Systems and processes enabling the identification and recognition of the wide range of skills and experiences that are valuable to healthcare support services will be important in the recruitment of new and the retraining of existing Kaiāwhina. New roles, changing technologies, new models of care, increasing diversity of consumer demography, along with the growth in long term conditions will all require particular skills that can be drawn from new and existing workforces. There is more work to be done in being able to identify what those skills and experiences are, where they exist and how they can be effectively recognised and applied.
