Category: Policy & Campaigns

The Allied Health Professionals Federation believes the Health Bill presents an important opportunity to strengthen Allied Health Professional (AHP) leadership across the health and care system.

The AHPF, which brings together the UK’s Allied Health Professional bodies and representative organisations including BIOS, represents more than 190,000 AHPs working across health, social care, education, justice and voluntary sector settings.

AHPs play a vital role in supporting people to stay well, preventing avoidable hospital admissions, enabling timely discharge, supporting rehabilitation and helping people live independently for longer.

Their expertise is central to delivering the government’s ambitions for prevention, neighbourhood health and more sustainable health and care services.

As the NHS continues to reform, leadership structures should reflect the contribution AHPs make to patient care, service redesign and population health outcomes.

The AHP Federation is therefore calling for stronger and more consistent AHP leadership and representation within NHS decision-making structures, ensuring the perspectives and expertise of the AHP workforce are embedded in the planning and delivery of services.

We urge the Government to use the Health Bill to strengthen system and professional leadership, enabling more effective workforce planning, service improvement and delivery of high-quality care.

• Strengthening AHP leadership will:
• Support better multidisciplinary decision-making.
• Improve service design and delivery.
• Help drive prevention and earlier intervention.
• Strengthen rehabilitation and recovery services.
• Maximise the impact of the NHS workforce.

This autumn, the AHPF looks forward to working with parliamentarians and NHS leaders to ensure AHPs are able to contribute fully to the future direction of health and care services.

Today, the government announced a new 10-Year Health Plan for the NHS in England, with a focus on moving care and treatment from hospitals into the community, a greater shift towards prevention, and the development of more digital services.

We are optimistic that this plan has the potential to reduce health inequalities. As orthoptists have a huge role to play in the prevention of eye health problems and delivering care effectively in the community, we hope to be able to engage positively with the plan.

We will be putting together a more comprehensive response when we’ve had a chance to read through the details and discuss with other eye care and AHP colleagues.

Today, to coincide with World Orthoptic Day, we officially launched our #WePatch campaign to raise awareness of the importance of occlusion, through both patching and treatment with eye drops.

The campaign offers support, resources and guidance for those supporting a child being treated with patching or eye drops. Occlusion therapy is an extremely effective treatment for amblyopia, the most common cause of reduced vision in young children. However, children can often find it quite challenging, as it involves covering their stronger eye, which significantly reduces their vision.

As well as providing guidance and resources to help with occlusion, we’re aiming to provide reassurance to adults who are supporting children and may be finding it difficult to encourage them.

Find out more about #WePatch here

Our new video, launched in advance of World Orthoptic Day on 2nd June, highlights the importance of patching parties normalising occlusion treatments for children and bringing together the adults that support them.

Filmed at a patching party at Sheffield Children’s Hospital, the video features orthoptist Beth Dudley discussing the purpose of occlusion and providing simple tips for supporting children during treatment. She also discusses the importance of patching parties in creating communities of children and adults who can share tips and support each other. We also hear the experiences of the parents of Emily and Noah about their experiences of supporting a child to patch.

In the build-up to the official launch of our #WePatch campaign, launched to coincide with World Orthoptic Day, we have been encouraging orthoptic departments across the country to hold patching parties in May and share their experiences to raise awareness of the importance but also the challenges associated with patching. The #WePatch campaign will raise awareness of patching and the role of orthoptists, but we will also be hosting a growing hub of information and resources to help those supporting a child with patching or occlusion with eye drops.

• Access information and resources for supporting children with patching
• Find guidance with setting up your own patching party

The third annual Greener AHP week will take place from Monday 31st March to Friday 4th April. There is strong support from AHP staff to tackle the climate change crisis.

The NHS is responsible for 5% of all UK emissions. Every aspect of healthcare delivery, from the production and disposal of equipment used, to the energy used in the settings we work in, to the travel for our patients and staff, contributes to carbon emissions. By addressing these areas, we can significantly reduce our carbon footprint and move towards a more sustainable healthcare system.

AHPs must act now to reduce the environmental impact of our services and deliver sustainable healthcare. The ‘Allied Health Professions strategy for England: AHPs Deliver’  emphasizes integrating net-zero practices into all AHP work.

We are asking AHP teams to get involved with Greener AHP Week this year.

How can you get involved?

• Schedule time to join the daily sessions. You can find the full programme of events here.
• Arrange team discussions
• Share what you or your team are doing using #GreenerAHP on social media
• Submit case studies to the Centre of Sustainable Healthcare
• Host your own event during the week
• Commit to undertake e-learning during the week. Find out more about the Environmentally Sustainable Healthcare Programme here. 

It is essential that the recently announced plan to abolish NHS England does not distract from the priority of achieving an expanded and skilled workforce within eye care and across the NHS.

Alongside other health unions, we are concerned about the way the decision has been handled with a lack of clear communication with the staff affected. We would hope that however the government plans to manage the NHS without NHSE, this is done with a greater level of partnership with trade unions and professional bodies representing the workforce.

Further, the NHS can only expand to meet the challenges it faces through greater investment in the clinical workforce. NHSE has provided significant funding over the past few years to support the development of the orthoptic workforce and meet the greater demand placed on eye care services, and we will be seeking reassurance that this investment will continue. Indeed, continued and greater investment is needed to fully address the recruitment and retention challenges across the NHS and the impact of any disruption caused by these changes must be minimised.