Rodwell Farm nursing home is in Row Town, near Addlestone and has been owned by Ernie Graham and Dr Karen Graham since the mid 1990s. Today it provides beds for 46 clients, covering both older people with frailty/confusion and younger people with physical disabilities. The home also offers day care and respite care facilities and employs a staff team of around 60.

Getting Started

During the late 1990s, and in common with many other nursing and care homes, Rodwell Farm found itself faced with ongoing staff turnover, which in turn, added to the business’ cost base.
Home owner Ernie Graham and then, staff nurse, Karen Raggett were keen to find a way to retain staff and to ensure that the home’s employees were equipped with both the skills and confidence to perform well in their jobs.

At that point, Rodwell Farm had had little involvement with NVQ based training programmes and so the first step was for Karen to gain the D32 and D33 NVQ Assessors award to enable her to support and guide staff working for NVQ qualifications.

Karen says: “We discovered the Surrey Joint Care Assessment Centre and began to work closely with them on delivering NVQ 2 and 3 programmes. I also studied for the Registered Managers Award with them.”

At the same time, Rodwell Farm recognised that it could also help to improve staff retention by providing free crèche facilities for staff. Initially a crèche catering for up to eight children, aged between two and five years and open between the hours of 9am and 3pm, was set up in a room within the home.

So popular was this with staff ranging from care assistants through to catering and cleaning employees, that the crèche moved to its own separate building in the grounds. Now it is registered with Ofsted and receives a grant to supply early years education to children aged three years and over. A holiday play scheme is also open to staff with children aged up to eight years.

In recent years, Rodwell Farm has begun to employ foreign nationals in order to smooth staffing gaps. These are mainly enrolled nurses who have qualified in their own countries. To cater for their needs for somewhere to live locally, the home also now offers residential accommodation.

Moving On

From the start, Rodwell Farm was keen to develop its own core of assessors and training expertise so that as much staff training as possible could be managed in-house. Karen Raggett, who is now the home’s Nurse and Training Manager, has trained four NVQ Assessors in-house and is now involved in the Learning & Skills Council sponsored national pilot scheme for NVQs without paper.

She explains: “Through the LSC sponsored project, I am working with 20 candidates, six from Rodwell Farm and the remainder from other local homes, on achieving NVQs without paper. These promise to help more care workers and homes achieve the required NVQs much more quickly.”

Rodwell Farm has also been invited to take part in a second pilot scheme funded by the European Social Fund through the Learning & Skills Council. Through this three tier project, an employee trains as an NVQ Assessor, while overseeing the studies of two colleagues who are working to NVQ level 2 in Care. Simultaneously another member of staff studies for the Internal Verifier’s qualification, while overseeing the trainee Assessor.

Karen says: “We are particularly keen on this model of training and have opted to double the package on offer. We will have four level 2 candidates supervised by two trainee Assessors who, in turn, will be moderated by two trainee Internal Verifiers.”

To enable the home to provide further core skills training in-house, Karen Raggett has not only acquired a professional training certificate, but is now set to qualify to teach manual handling and advanced food hygiene to Foundation Standard level. Similarly, Rodwell Farm’s Home Manager, who is currently studying for a BSc in Health Studies, is qualified to deliver not only Health and Safety training, but also to develop Health & Safety schedules and to undertake risk assessments.

Results

Already 40 per cent of Rodwell Farm’s staff have achieved NVQ level 2 or higher qualifications and with the introduction of NVQs without paper, the home expects this figure to rise to 100 per cent by the middle of 2005.

Hand in hand with the training programme, Rodwell Farm has also introduced individual staff development plans through which each employee’s training needs are regularly reviewed and staff aspirations supported.

Karen Raggett says: “We have overcome our staff retention difficulties. For example, our crèche has given us eight staff that we would otherwise not have and the residential accommodation we provide makes it easier to attract overseas nationals. However, we have also grown our own expertise.

Not only do we have a cost-effective training programme, but we have also avoided the need to pay consultants for a good deal of our training and health and safety requirements. Once we have our own Internal Verifiers, we will achieve further cost savings.”
Rodwell Farm can also point to staff whose careers have developed in other directions, as a result of the home’s training and development programme. Some have used NVQ care qualifications as a route in to nurse training and others, like Karen Raggett, have progressed to more senior roles with the home.

Karen explains: “The next step is share the expertise we have developed here with others in our group of nursing and care homes.

The best advice I can give to other homes is to access the Care Sector Development Project conferences and to take advantage of the part funding available from TOPPS to help fund NVQ programmes for employees. Also, find a good assessment centre and stick with them because they will provide the right support to enable you to succeed.”