NHS Careers Performance to young people across the North East and North Cumbria

The Careers Directorate in HEENE is involved in a range of activities and events throughout the financial year to provide information, advice and guidance about career opportunities within the NHS. This is acutely important given the demise of the statutory careers service ended (Connexions) in 2012 and was replaced by the National Careers Service, which was primarily aimed at adults. Responsibility for careers advice was then transferred to schools/colleges and recurrent research papers have highlighted the issues that this has raised. Interaction with young people and career changers is crucial to ensure that HEE is able to secure the future workforce. The current HEE strategies are multi-factorial, including a focus on upskilling the current workforce, but none of these along will be able to meet our workforce demand. Indeed the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has also suggested that careers guidance should be started as early as primary school. Given the resources and staff available in the Careers Directorate and the number of schools/colleges in the North East/North Cumbria alone, it is strategically easier to target large scale events to engage with a wider potential argument. In many cases we are unable to support careers events in schools due to capacity of the team and schools increasingly facing issues taking students 3 out of schools due to timetabling, permissions, staff shortages and transport costs. *Something about Gatsby* Drama in education is a solution to these issues due to it touring schools and delivering a high impact performance within a short period of time -both resourceful for the schools and HEE careers team. By using humour, actors are able to raise the profile of a range of different, less obvious careers within the NHS, as well as highlight particular shortage areas in workforce. Raising awareness and also widening participation are central strategic aims of Health Education England and this can easily be integrated into the school calendar through drama performances. Although access to schools and curricula time is currently constrained due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we would anticipate that various delivery methods would be utilised in order to fulfil the requirements of the contract.