Northern Care Alliance
The Northern Care Alliance is an NHS Foundation Trust (NCA FT) created by bringing together two NHS Trusts, Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust and The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust. The NCA FT was formally established on 1 October 2021. The NCA has been working together as a group since 2016.
Our dedicated team of around 20,000 staff – our NCA Family – provide a range of community and hospital services to over one million people across Bury, Oldham, Rochdale and Salford, as well as providing more specialist care to patients across Greater Manchester and beyond.
Patients and service users may receive a range of integrated health and social care services at their home or in their community or be treated and cared for in one of our four hospitals – Salford Royal Hospital, The Royal Oldham Hospital, Rochdale Infirmary or Fairfield General Hospital in Bury.
Our aim is to save lives and improve lives. We do this by working with partner organisations in improving the population health of our local communities, and by delivering consistently high standards of care and experience each day, every day. Our four Care Organisations are; Salford, Oldham, Bury and Rochdale.
Check out our new WorkSTART website where you can find more information on the programmes we can offer to local residents across Bury, Oldham, Rochdale and Salford who are either thinking of a career in the NHS, are applying for a health related course at college or University or who are interested in working in the NHS.
What We Offer
Apprenticeships
The NCA are an apprenticeship employer-provider, this gives us the opportunity to deliver in-house apprenticeships in Healthcare, Business Administration & Customer Service. All staff have the opportunity to access an occupationally relevant apprenticeship and we work with local training providers to deliver apprenticeships outside of our scope. All our apprenticeship vacancies are advertised through NHS jobs and we advise anyone aspiring to work in the NHS to register with NHS jobs for vacancy alerts. For an extensive list of possible apprenticeships and testimonies from NHS Apprentices please see https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/career-planning/study-and-training/apprenticeships-traineeships-and-cadet-schemes
Work Experience placements for School and College aged students
Explore a place where future careers are made possible. If you’re at school or college, aged 14 or over and are considering a career in healthcare, then join us for up to one-week on Work Experience. You’ll be able to gain a real sense of what it’s like to work in a health care setting and have the chance to decide whether it’s the right career path for you.
Our placements are in very high demand. So, if you are interested in joining us for a placement, please get your application in early to avoid disappointment. Please note that priority is given to those who live or are being educated within our NCA postcode areas (Bury, Rochdale, Oldham and Salford)..
Please email: workexperience@nca.nhs.uk providing your name, date of birth, name of school/college and home address with postcode and what type of placement you are looking for.
Further course information:
We’re committed to improving the life opportunities, inclusion, social mobility and health and wellbeing of our local population. We know that for many, a small taste of what it’s like to work in healthcare is enough to raise their aspirations and fuel a desire to work in the NHS.
This is why our Widening Participation Team are dedicated to building a programme of work to target pockets of our community who would benefit from additional help to access opportunities. Our aim is to support these individuals to gain paid employment, learn new skills or simply gain exposure to the world of healthcare.
We hope that by reaching-out and connecting in this way, we can start to raise awareness of the many career opportunities available within the NHS and begin to build bridges with our future workforce.
Careers activity
From talks at primary schools, high schools and colleges to careers fairs, mock interviews and speed networking events – our NHS Career Ambassadors are committed to raising awareness of NHS Careers with our local young people.
If you’re a careers teacher in an NCA catchment postcode and are thinking about organising a careers event (in person or virtual), please contact hub.careers@mft.nhs.uk
Cadet/T level programme
We are thrilled to be working in partnership with 4 local Colleges to support students to successfully complete the new T level qualification in Health (Adult Nursing) . The Colleges involved in our Northern Care College Alliance are:
· Bury College
· Eccles Sixth Form College
· Oldham College
· Hopwood Hall College, Rochdale
Most Cadet/T level students will either go on to study Nursing or another healthcare related degree such as Paramedic Science or an Allied Health Professional (AHP) career such as Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Podiatry or Speech and Language therapy or they will choose to come and work for the NCA and continue to develop their career through the training and development opportunities the NCA can offer.
We have been working hard with the new Northern Care College Alliance to develop the T Level health course and are keen to speak with parents and students about this new qualification on offer. This new pathway prepares students to step directly into entry level roles in the NHS. They may then choose to develop their career with an apprenticeship (and get paid whilst studying) or continue their studies at university.
For info about the Cadet/T level Adult nursing Health programmes:
Supported Internship
Each of our 4 Care Organisations run a supported internship programme. This is a year-long course internship for young people with a learning disability (age 18-24) and is operated in partnership with local educational providers and/or the charity Pure Innovations. The internship programme combines classroom study, with three placements in real job roles across our hospital sites. This work and study time is invaluable. It enables our interns to gain the skills, confidence and qualifications necessary to step into paid employment at the end of the programme. It’s a pleasure to see many of our young people step into a paid NHS career as a direct result of it.
Pre-employment programmes
We run a range of pre-employment programmes to help local unemployed people, who are interested in working in the NHS but perhaps lacking the work experience necessary for their job application to be successful.
Our pre-employment programmes are as follows:
Into Healthcare pre employment programme
The Prince’s Trust Get into Hospital Services Programme (People aged 18-30)
The Sector Based Work Academy pre-employment programme (Salford)
Stepping Into the NHS Pre apprenticeship Programme for young people not in Education, Employment or Training (Oldham)
These programmes provide the opportunity to make a real positive difference in someone’s life, and can act as a stepping-stone, out of unemployment.
How are your programmes delivered:
For more information about a particular course please email workexperience@nca.nhs.uk
COVID Information
Unfortunately, in light of the current situation in relation to COVID-19, the NCA has taken the decision to suspend our Work Experience placement programme until further notice.
We are sure that you will understand that this decision ensures that we put the safety of you, our patients, staff and the wider public first and removes any non-essential additional pressure on our staff at this challenging time.
Please be assured that we will are are currently reviewing this position and, with advice, will reopen our programme as soon as it is safe to do so. In the meantime we have a range of virtual resources, including webinars available for students to access and have a limited number of virtual work experience placements we can arrange.
Check out our YouTube Channel which has short 3 minute videos from our staff
If you are interested in joining a webinar, please email us with your area of interest or fill in the form below, and we will contact you with the date and further information.
Upcoming Events
Check out our up coming events here: https://gmcareershub.nhs.uk/events
Contact Details:
Email: workexperience@srft.nhs.uk
“‘I just want to say thank you so much for organising the virtual work experience week. It was very interesting and offered a really good insight into lots of different careers I hadn’t considered before. I really appreciate the time and effort it must have taken to organise’
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“‘You assisted me with my work experience in Fairfield A&E a number of years ago. I now work part time at Fairfield A&E while studying medicine so it must have gone well - so thank you for that. ’”
“‘I just finished my 1st year of medicine at University of Nottingham’ ”
