Health and Care Horizons Leeds: Attracting, navigating and inspiring the future workforce

Abstract Health and social care (H&SC) partners in Leeds connect and collaborate across seven shared workforce priorities, including ‘growing and developing registrants” and “narrowing inequalities”. A range of programmes across the Leeds H&SC system promote collaborative, person-centred recruitment, and developing diverse & accessible talent pipelines. Through these programmes and the aims of the NHS long-term workforce plan we have identified a need to draw together information, insight and opportunities to attract, navigate, inform and inspire young people into H&SC careers. The Leeds partnership co-designed an interactive career exploration tool with young people to meet these aims. This person-centred digital tool is designed to dispel misinformation and equip young people with personalised actions and pathways to work anywhere in the sector based on their skills, values and lifestyle. The framework of our approach to designing the tool and lessons learned is applicable to other settings and localities. An academically embedded evaluation of the co-design phase demonstrated the importance of reaching out to a diverse audience. We worked with over 400 young people across 12 unique and representative networks and made them feel valued. Our partners were persuaded by the potential for the tool to boost recruitment and retention strategies, aligning with the NHS long-term workforce plan and the vision for a Social Care Workforce Strategy. The platform will be launched in September 2024 so process findings will be combined with results around usage, appraisal from the sector and careers services, and impact on employers and educators. Through co-design we have challenged our assumptions at all stages of the project and created a transformational tool to address the needs of the sector and young people in Leeds. We will continue to work closely with our H&SC sector partners to embed the tool in their organisations and expand the tool’s functionality. Key messages • We have created a system-wide operational career exploration tool to attract young people in Leeds to the right Health and Care career for them. • We will highlight the core values that have underpinned the creation of the tool, its functionality and lessons learned post-launch.