Recruitment drive targets children for NHS careers
York business sold for £100m
THE NHS in England has launched the biggest recruitment drive in its history to encourage schoolchildren to work in the health service.
It comes after the NHS ended the last financial year with almost 100,000 staff vacancies as busy hospitals struggled to keep up with demand on A&E departments..
The new £8m recruitment drive has been launched after the toughest winter yet for the NHS and warnings from doctors’ leaders of an “all-year” crisis facing hospitals.
The We Are The NHS campaign will highlight professions across the health service, initially focusing on nursing.
NHS England said the campaign will primarily target children aged 14 to 18 through TV and radio adverts as well as posters and social media.
A poll released to mark the launch of the campaign, funded by NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care, found that three quarters of English adults name nurses and doctors as the professions they trust the most.
Some 68 per cent of the 2,100 people surveyed said they were some of the most important roles in society.
But people could not generally identify different sectors nurses worked in, such as mental health, and could not name nursing roles outside of the hospital sector, such as district nursing.
Health and Social Care Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: “Being a nurse or midwife in the NHS is one of the most exciting and fulfilling careers anyone can undertake.
“I want this campaign to inspire people to take up a career in the NHS and help boost the number of homegrown nurses and midwives.”
Janet Davies, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Staffing shortages in the NHS are a source of huge pressure and force even more to leave. This campaign can break that cycle.”
IN RECENT months, news relating to Yorkshire and the railways has rarely been positive. But while it may not make any commute quicker or carriage less packed, a local success story is bringing a smile at last.
The company Great Rail Journeys – which offers almost 400 trips to more than 50 countries and has seen recent increases in demand for travel around Europe – has been purchased for about £100m, with new owner private equity firm Duke Street committed to growing its operation in York, where it employs 150 people. News of the sale comes, appropriately, on the 80th anniversary of the Doncaster-built steam locomotive the Mallard setting a world speed record that still stands to this day – travelling at 126mph on the East Coast Main Line.
Such displays of Yorkshire ingenuity past and present relating to the railways stand in stark contrast to the delivery of basic services to long-suffering passengers on daily routes.