The trust has been shortlisted for the Large Apprenticeship Employer category in the prestigious annual awards ceremony organised by Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership (OxLEP), which champions Oxfordshire’s economic potential.

Oxford Health launched its apprenticeship scheme in 2018, realising the need to invest and develop its future workforce in a wealth of different roles and disciplines.

We now have more than 300 apprentices learning while they earn with us, providing vital support to the trust’s mental health and community health services, whether it’s in roles with direct patient contact or in business administration positions.

Rebecca Elsworth, Oxford Health’s apprenticeship manager, is delighted the trust has been shortlisted in the awards.

She said: “We are extremely proud to be a finalist, which demonstrates our commitment to develop our bright stars of the future. Our apprenticeships are a great way to develop your career, learning key skills in a practical environment.

“We offer numerous interesting roles, so if you would like to become an apprentice at Oxford Health, have a conversation with us and see what we can offer you.

“Send us an email at apprenticeships@oxfordhealth.nhs.uk  or have a look at our website for the latest opportunities. We would be happy to help”.

Our apprenticeship scheme has been praised by OFSTED for “a clear strategy to use apprenticeship programmes to develop their own staff to fill gaps in their workforce” and noted we use “feedback from apprentices to make changes to the programme”.

Roles in our programmes include:

• Nurse associate apprenticeship – co-delivered with Bucks New University. It supports development from a healthcare assistant to a registered nursing associate, with the opportunity to ‘top-up’ with a level 6 degree nursing apprenticeship resulting in further career development
• Business administrator apprenticeship and team leader apprenticeship – part of the career development framework for administrative staff, becoming an entry requirement for an operations manager role
• Senior healthcare support worker – offers entry requirement to nursing associate and degree nursing courses. There is also a new nurse cadet scheme for 20 apprentices who are aged 16-19 years old, find out more here
• Academic professional – being delivered to a small cohort of 12 learning and development staff as a developmental opportunity, also as a means of maintaining and delivering high quality assured training programmes
• Psychological wellbeing practitioner – due to launch in April, this will involve working in partnership with Bucks New University and have the British Psychological Society accreditation
• Operations/departmental manager – due to launch in April to staff

Oxford Health will find out if we are winners in our category, which is sponsored by electrical contractor and training specialist Clarkson Evans,  in an awards ceremony at the Williams F1 Conference Centre in Grove on Thursday, April 2.