The DCHS Admin People’s Charter
The DCHS Admin People’s Charter has been created in collaboration with administration colleagues to champion the role of admin staff within our organisation. The charter has been written in line with the People Promise principles and was inspired by the “UNISON Admin Charter for Change – One Team” document. Admin colleagues have been involved and consulted at the DCHS Admin Forum, and also via an online survey. The Trust Board signed up to the DCHS Admin People’s Charter at the October 2024 public board meeting and were happy to endorse such an important initiative to help involve and recognise our admin staff group and the important work that they do.
The purpose of the charter is to outline a number of pledges that DCHS will commit to, and likewise, the commitment of our admin colleagues to the Trust. It’s estimated that around 600+ DCHS staff classify themselves as admin. You can read more here.
Hazel Lea has been leading this work as part of her role as a DCHS staff governor for non-clinical staff. Hazel said “admin recognition and engagement is an area that I feel passionately about, having come from an admin background myself, working in admin roles for around the first 10 years of my 30 year NHS career. At the end of 2023 I launched the first admin staff survey, and from this, I launched the Admin Forum in February 2024 which meets every 2-3 months and, so far, has seen between 50-100 attendees at each of the forums, with around 175 members (and rising) in the MS Teams group.”
Admin Forum Summary
NHS Elect – run free online training, webinars and courses on a variety of subjects, from career planning and interview skills, to improving the patient experience, or customer care for corporate staff. Register for an NHS Elect account with your nhs.net email address, then search for relevant opportunities and receive their email updates – NHS Elect
Apprenticeships - Admin colleagues can contact dchst.apprenticeships@nhs.net if you’re interested in undertaking training via the apprenticeship route, which you can do alongside your main job role. There’s loads of free apprenticeship qualifications – here’s the link to the Apprenticeship search website - Apprenticeship search / Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education
DCHS Leadership Development Team – Not just for colleagues in leadership roles, you’ll find links relating to coaching, mentoring, appraisal and kindness into action - Management and Leadership
DCHS Management Essentials – Do you manage staff in your team or want to support them with finding resources and support for things like people management or self development? - Management essentials : Derbyshire Community Health Services
DCHS Quality Improvement – We’d love to see more admin colleagues getting involved in quality improvement and efficiency projects and putting their experience and suggestions into action. There’s lot of training and simple templates to get you started – Improvement, innovation and effectiveness.
Microsoft - It’s helpful for admin colleagues to enhance and improve their IT skills and Microsoft training is available: The NHS Digital Learning Solutions Learning Portal and Microsoft 365 Training
Copilot and Digital Systems – Want to know more about AI? Consider how AI can enable admin colleagues to work more effectively and save time doing repetitive tasks to free you up to do more interesting work to really support your teams to embrace technology. Digital Systems Guidance : Derbyshire Community Health Services
Joined up Care Derbyshire - JuCD have loads of development opportunities – see attached. It may appear that they’re mostly aimed at Leaders, but there’s some great options for all such as “developing self-awareness – confidence” and “communication skills”.
DCHS Management Essentials – Do you manage staff in your team or want to support them with finding resources and support for things like people management or self development? Management essentials : Derbyshire Community Health Services
Share learning and good practice with other admin colleagues in DCHS – Please showcase what you and your team do well and save other’s time in creating new systems and processes which have already been done. Please join our Admin Forum, if you don’t have time to attend all the bi-monthly meetings, that’s fine, you can see and share information in the chat. Request to join here.