The National Care Forum (NCF) was pleased to respond to the Nursing & Midwifery Council’s (NMC) consultation on the emerging themes for their 2020 – 2025 strategy, building on the consultation session that Emma Westcott, Assistant Director, Strategy, NMC conducted with the NCF Practice and Quality Forum on 2 October 2019.

NCF Response

We welcome both the development of MNC’s five-year strategy and the opportunity to contribute our views. We were very pleased to see and hear that the NMC clearly recognise the pressures across the social care system, especially the issues of workforce shortages (including EU and non-EU nationals, changing career pathways and patterns of working and equality, diversity and inclusion challenges) and increasingly complex care needs, as well as the potential benefits and opportunities of medical and technological advances. We also welcome the theme which focuses on a more sophisticated use of all the data available to the NMC as we agree that this will provide invaluable intelligence to help respond to existing challenges and support the future workforce development.
There are however, some key issues relating specifically to adult social care nursing that we would like to see strengthened and more visible in the strategy themes.

This consultation provides a key opportunity to ensure that nursing in adult social care features more prominently within the new NMC strategy and that our nurses are given sufficient focus, support and value by the regulator.

NCF asks: we would like the NMC to strengthen their strategy themes to reflect and support the following key points

 Explicit value and recognition of social care nurses and the immense contribution they make
 Building that respect for and valuing of social care at the beginning of the nursing career with training and placements in social care and better return to practice support
 Future direction of nurses in social care – routine rotational placements between acute and social care settings
 Digital confidence for our future nursing workforce
 Strengthening our social care nurses’ CPD and research evidence based practice
 Nursing associates – better clarity on the role, how it is supported, how it’s funded, how it fits into the future picture
 Images and implied messaging for the strategy