Upskilling Project

In today's NHS, innovation often starts at the front lines. When faced with mounting pressures and rising backlogs, our team chose to invest in people, upskilling our support workforce to lead with purpose and precision.

COVID-19 didn't just disrupt classrooms, it delayed critical vision screening for thousands of children. Referrals to our community eye service doubled in 2021. Our system was overloaded. Families were waiting months, and we knew we had to find a better way.

We introduced a new clinic model, child vision clinics, originally led by orthoptists and optometrists, now run jointly by upskilled support workers and optometrists.

This simple change freed up specialist time, reduced delays, and kept care in the community where it's needed most. Backed by NHSE funding, we launched a 12-month secondment for two orthoptic support workers, training them to run clinics. Their journey was guided by training workbook, competencies, mentorship, and most of all, belief in what they could achieve.

The impact was clear. 93% of children were seen within 18 weeks. Appointments were shorter, yet more efficient. We saved over £13,000 and doubled clinic capacity, all while maintaining clinical quality and accuracy. This was more than a trial, it was proof of concept.

Our support workers didn't just grow their skills, they found their calling. From seeing children return to school wearing glasses to planning their future as orthoptists, their stories remind us that workforce development is human development. This project embodies the future shift vision, with earlier treatment to prevention output. Trained support workers handle routine referrals, creating a smarter, more resilient system.

Recognized nationally by BIOS and awarded regionally by BLMKICB and nationally by BIOS and Advancing Healthcare, our model is now part of a national workforce pilot. It's being shared as a blueprint for other trusts.

This is transformation, driven by evidence, sustained by collaboration. Let's not just imagine a better NHS, let's build one. Together, we can support a workforce that sees more than eyes, one that sees potential, purpose, and the future of care.

See you. I'll hand it over to you then, Louise and Alice. So we were the two support workers working in primarily school screening that were upskilled as part of this project. And as it says in the video, part of that is the children that we see who we're referring in urgently. We facilitate those clinics along with an optometrist, where the children walk out with glasses and prescription and a treatment plan.

And what we also did was work with a clinic where the children weren't urgent, they were routine. They just needed to see whether it was a case of lost concentration or anything like that in schools, to just recheck their vision, which would normally be done by an orthoptist, but we took over those clinics.

Children were seen in, I think 15 minutes, weren't they? We were seen. So we were able to see quite a few children over quite a few days, and then either discharge them to the high street optometrist or again, walk out with a treatment plan and some glasses. Yeah.

It was inspired really or came about after COVID when there was a lot of backlog. Yeah. And in school we screened a lot of children that had missed out on their vision screening during COVID lockdowns. And we found that the orthoptist time, there just wasn't any, so we didn't know how to really deal with that.

So that's kind of how the idea of support workers doing clinics came along. Freeing up a lot of the orthoptist time where we could come in and just screen a lot of children in Luton and Bedford. Yeah. And it's been very exciting for us because our project was recognized upon by BIOS, which is the British and Irish Orthoptic Society. And me and Alice got to join a expert panel group. So we got to meet a lot of other support workers and a lot of other orthoptists through that. And based on our project, they developed a standard that can be rolled out on- Yeah ... all across the UK, to upskill support workers and hopefully cut down waiting time.

And also we got to see what other support workers are doing in other different regions as well, because a lot are doing a lot of other things that we're looking to try and implement and just grow the program as much as we can.

And I think the best part of it was that me and Alice really got to take part of shaping what we were doing as well. So our manager, whenever we had an idea, she really listened to our ideas. Yeah. So the whole upskilling project was shaped by the two of us, so really gave us a lot of freedom, didn't it?