Nick Nixon, Management Development Adviser explained what is available: "We offer management development at NVQ levels 3 and 4 and Certificate and Diploma programmes. We hope to offer an in-house MBA programme later in 2002 so there is a pretty robust ladder of learning opportunity. Where staff start on the ladder and the route they take is obviously determined by an analysis of their job description and diagnostic of skills and learning needs. But we also consider the individual's motivation, personal availability, career expectations, learning preferences and a personal audit carried out with his or her line manager."

"For a number of years we have offered the Health and Social Services Management programme (MESOL and Advanced MESOL, as it is still commonly known in the NHS) and we have our first HSSM diploma running this year accredited by De Montfort University. This offers Certificate and Diploma management qualifications and Diploma graduates can go on to De Montfort's MBA programme with advanced standing. However, we still needed something at the supervisory entry level and something which was more accessible to a greater number of our 4,000 staff."

This is where NVQ's accredited by NEBS Management come in. Sandra Seed, the Trust's NVQ adviser takes up the story:

"A lot of the qualifications included in our overall staff development programme are already NVQ's - customer care for instance - and developing management skills and qualifications this way seemed a less daunting route for some of our new managers. Doing an Open Learning programme takes a certain kind of independence and self-confidence about one's study abilities, which not everyone has. Possibly it also appeals more to people who feel comfortable with a more academic, broadly reflective approach. There was need for something which would enable essentially practical people, who start from the basis of simply wanting to be better equipped to cope with their management role, to develop their management skills and to get accreditation for it."

The NVQ programme comprises three main components: a programme of study days - day-long workshops on management topics run by an external consultant who was herself a nurse; individual support for the portfolio-building process; and learning sets. Advice and assessment is provided by the Trust's team of qualified advisers rather than being contracted out. Nick Nixon comments: "Supporting and assessing portfolio development in-house is part of our strategy for embedding the use of national standards throughout the Trust. It also means we can directly monitor standards and assess for ourselves the contribution NVQ's are making to performance."

As for the third element of the programme, the learning sets, Sandra Seed takes up the story: "We are now in our second year of offering Management NVQ's and learning sets have been one of the most successful features. Each set comprises about five candidates plus me or Nick acting as facilitator. They meet monthly to share ideas and generally support each other in the early stages of portfolio building. Initially they are working on the same unit but gradually this breaks up as people's individual work experience takes them off in different directions. Some people are quicker than others at recognising an aspect of the job which will provide high quality portfolio evidence and this is something with which they can help the rest of the set."

"Learning set meetings are quite social, often combined with grabbing a quick sandwich and a drink, but the sets keep in touch and help each other via e-mail between meetings. It's fun and everybody seems to agree that they are enormously supportive. They are usually still running ten months into a year-long programme. I have no doubt that the 100% completion rate so far is partly attributable to dynamic learning sets."

It is planned that this year's cohort of fifteen Level 4 candidates and six Level 3 will expand even further in future. Nick Nixon comments: "Aiming to improve partnership with neighbouring trusts, we have already invited some candidates from South London and Maudesley NHS Trust on to the programme. We have one candidate from a nursing home in Eastbourne and we are now talking to this and another nursing home (the Royal Star and Garter nursing home for disabled ex-service men and women at Richmond) about designing tailored management development programmes in-house with each. Even within the Trust the programme breaks down the isolation from the rest of the organisation which people can feel. Sharing with people from quite different parts of the NHS broadens the perspective in a way which would be difficult to achieve any other way."

Ann Johnson is Senior Communications Manager for South London and Maudsley NHS Trust. This mental health care trust comprises three hospitals, Lambeth, Maudsley and Royal Bethlem serving Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark and Croydon and Ann is responsible for the running of the main switchboard, two reception areas, post, pagers and mobiles. She manages a team of six on shifts plus two receptionists.
Ann, who joined the health service eight years ago after a career in administration in the construction industry, already has an NVQ in Administration Level 3 under her belt. She joined the Level 4 Management programme because she wanted some practical help in carrying out her relatively new responsibilities in the trust, having been confirmed in post in summer 2001.

"I find the process of building a portfolio makes me much more aware of what I am doing and why. You have to justify your actions, provide a rationale for them and produce the evidence to support what you are saying. In fact, it is very like what managing in the NHS is about. You have to have an audit trail and be accountable for what you have done."

"Moving up to this level of management, I realise that there is much more planning, much more building and working within a team rather than just working in your own little pocket of the organisation."

I'm finding the Universal Manager dossiers really helpful with that. I can't say I went away and read them from cover to cover when I first got them! I glanced through them but following on from study days, when I had to think about what I actually do in my job and how it could be done better, a little light would come on and I'd remember that I had read something about this in Universal Manager. Then I'd go back and read the parts of it I wanted in more depth. Some of the activities have given me some good clues about how to start reviewing practice in my area of responsibility and I shall definitely use them in my portfolio as reflective evidence.

"I'm particularly focusing at the moment on improving communication and co-operation with other functions. Currently I'm getting the switchboard staff to monitor all sorts of minor frustrations as they occur, such as voice and fax calls not being differentiated. It is a combination of human error and systems failure. If we get the evidence together convincingly, I can make a case to the IT department to look at this problem properly rather than my team just dealing with it on a case by case basis. It is not major, but it is not efficient and it is very exasperating, which has a knock-on effect on how people perform at work."

"It's all a question of learning to look at the bigger picture."

Kate Matharu, Senior Dental Nurse Tutor, must sometimes feel she has a tiger by the tail. King's College Hospital Education and Training Centre for Dental Nurses having recently merged with Guy's Hospital School of Dental Nursing, it is now the largest dental nursing school in the country. Kate's responsibility for twelve student dental nurses on one site will shortly increase to being responsible for fifty two on four separate sites.

She joined the NVQ Management Level 4 programme because she felt she needed help with the scaling up of all the issues she was currently dealing with. "I could see there were going to be major logistical issues and the need for systems to ensure we were monitoring students and tracking progress as well as a need for more sophisticated people management skills. I wanted some structured tools to help me get to grips with managing a 'state of the unknown'"

"I started with Universal Manager dossiers 'Learning Organisations' and '21st Century Communications' and I have found them both very helpful. They are easy to read, help me to reflect on what I actually do and work out practical solutions for myself, which is how I like to learn."

"I have had a look round the web-site too and I think I will be using that increasingly for subject areas which I don't currently know anything about and need more resources than I can easily get hold of through my job."

"The learning sets are brilliant too. Dental nursing tends to be a bit isolated because it is a discrete function and it is in a separate building from the rest of the hospital. It is especially good for me to have a built-in opportunity to network and to find out from my peers that we all have management issues in common. It's not just me!"

Extract from Progress, February 2002
© NEBS Management 2002