A national initiative to improve training and education for cancer care professionals, led by Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance (CMCA) has been given a prestigious healthcare award.
The Supportive and Assistive Programme, developing the current and future cancer workforce through the Aspirant Cancer Career and Education Development (ACCEND) Framework, won Workforce Initiative of the Year at the HSJ Awards.
The programme has given the supportive and assistive workforce – which helps cancer clinicians care for patients – transformational reform for their career pathways and associated education, training, learning and development opportunities.
Development of the programme has been led by John Gale, a Senior Programme Manager at CMCA, who headed a team that collaborated with colleagues from Wessex Cancer Alliance as well.
Jo Tibbles, ACCEND Implementation lead for the supportive and assistive workforces at Wessex Cancer Alliance said: “It was a pleasure to receive an invite to join the CMCA at the HSJ Awards evening, and to be recognised as a key partner in this workforce initiative.”
The Health Service Journal (HSJ) said of the award win: “The judges praised this initiative’s scalability and success in transforming unregistered individuals into valued colleagues. Congratulations!”
John Gale said: “We are delighted that this programme has been given nationwide recognition through this award and I would like to thank everyone who has assisted the programme in its development and implementation, especially Khandker Manzoor who has been instrumental in the support of this programme as a ACCEND Project Officer in CMCA.”
Jon Hayes, CMCA Managing Director, said: “Huge congratulations to John and his team for this rightful recognition of how transformational the programme has been in cancer care across the country.
“Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance, through the dedication of John, led this initiative from the start as we realised how important the supportive and assistive workforce is in delivering world-class cancer care to a growing number of patients who are being treated with, and living beyond, this disease.”
Kathy Cooke, Senior Workforce Programme Manager at Wessex Cancer Alliance said: “Jo Tibbles has been instrumental in supporting and developing this important workforce across Wessex cancer services and it is great to see her contribution to the national work, led by Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance, recognised beyond her Wessex colleagues. Well done!”
For more information on the ACCEND programme in Wessex, see:
https://wessexcanceralliance.nhs.uk/accend-for-supportive-and-assistive-workforce/
The project team, led by Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance, pictured with their HSJ Award.
Jo Tibbles from Wessex Cancer Alliance, has been instrumental in supporting the development of the ACCEND framework and was delighted to be invited to the HSJ Awards and join the celebrations with CMCA.