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Overseas Nurses Arrive to Boost Care Staff

Saint Cecilia’s welcomes trio from Ghana to join team

An award-winning Yorkshire care provider has received a much-needed boost to its staff with the arrival of three nurses from more than 4,000 miles away.

Thanks to an innovative partnership with its local health trust, Saint Cecilia’s Care Group in Scarborough has recruited the nurses from Ghana.

After competing their training in North Yorkshire, the three will be ready to join the company’s nursing homes in Scarborough and Whitby.

Harriet, Yvonne and Evans arrived in Scarborough last week after a recruitment process which has taken the best part of a year to complete.

Director Aaron Padgham said:
“This is a very exciting and significant moment for Saint Cecilia’s as we welcome these staff from Ghana to Scarborough.

“It is the result of a long process which began with an application for a licence to bring in overseas staff to provide care and ends with three nurses stepping off a plane in Manchester ready to work with us caring for people in Scarborough and Whitby.

“In between there has been a ton of bureaucracy and paperwork and we are indebted to York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for helping us to smooth the process of bringing in the staff we desperately need.”

At a time of extreme staff shortages across the country, Saint Cecilia’s needed to move quickly once it had the necessary licences in place to enable it to recruit from overseas.

Drawing on the previous experience the Trust had in recruiting via these channels has saved the care group countless hours and streamlined the process enormously.

This pilot scheme – to enable social care providers to access health trust facilities for staff to study for and take their Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) – has been a lifeline for Saint Cecilia’s and for the nurses it has recruited.

“Without this support, we would have had real concerns about recruiting the staff we need to provide nursing care in our homes,” Mr Padgham added.

“The partnership working we have enjoyed with the NHS trust has been first-class and has gone beyond support in getting staff through the OCSE process right through our overall journey to recruit nursing staff from overseas to help us tackle the chronic staff shortages we are currently experiencing.

“An extension of this arrangement to more social care providers would bring tremendous benefits to staff recruitment and delivery of care.

“It has been a brilliant example of partnership working at its very best and we are indebted to the Trust for their support.

 

Nestle