- Conference
- 2009 Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 1 December 2008
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
This Conference notes that the NHS Staff Council agreed to changes to Ill Health Retirement arrangements for staff in the NHS in 2008. This followed a consultation period lasting from 22 October 2007 until 21 January 2008. The Department of Health document “Managing Ill Health Retirement in the NHS – A Guide for Human Resources and Occupational Health Services” emphasises the following:
a.The need for NHS employers to put in place procedures which ensure that “redeployment is always considered when existing duties are contributing to an employee’s ill health”
and that;
b.“rehabilitation is actively addressed as part of sickness absence management (recommendation 9)”
Conference also notes the NHS Staff Council clarification given in 2008 that equivalence in assessing reasonable alternative employment means that any alternative must fall in the same pay band as that of the employee’s substantive post.
Conference acknowledges that NHS Ambulance Trusts are in a very weak position to be able to fulfil this commitment when compared with others in the wider NHS for the following reasons:
i.NHS Ambulance staffs, Emergency Care Practitioners, Paramedics, Technicians and Patient Transport Staff are all required to be 100% fit and able to carry out a full range of lifting and handling duties to stay in post. These lifting duties are often in totally uncontrolled environments and with little or no lifting and handling equipment/aids.
ii.Since the merger of the 31 English Ambulance Trusts into 11 in 2006 they have become very large geographical employers, which have added to the rehabilitation and relocation difficulties. Ambulance trusts simply do not have the capacity in alternative rehabilitation opportunities to offer their operational staffs that, in relation to the overall workforce numbers, make up nearly two thirds of all employees.
Conference also acknowledges that the unavoidable physicality inherent in ambulance work results in many operational staff seeking ill health retirement, sometimes at a very early age. Under the new scheme, many will fall into Tier 1 which means they will need to seek future employment outside the NHS. These members are often highly trained and skilled clinicians who still have much to offer the NHS if they could be accommodated locally in acute or other NHS settings.
Conference notes that with the increase of Foundation Trusts in England, particularly in the acute sector, access to alternative jobs in those settings (other than applying in the normal way) is not open to Ambulance Trusts seeking redeployment for those clinicians whose lifting capability is “no longer what it used to be.” However conference also notes that that the position is different in the other UK countries particularly in Wales where a move to an all Wales NHS will hopefully improve the situation.
Conference also notes that whilst at present this is a particular issue for Ambulance Service workers there may be other NHS staff groups similarly disadvantaged and in particular potential fragmentation of the English primary care sector will exacerbate this problem.
Conference calls upon the Health Service Group Executive to:
1.Seek the assistance of the Department of Health for England, Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety for Northern Ireland, NHS Wales, NHS Scotland, Scottish Health Boards, English Strategic Health Authorities and all other influential bodies to relax any “protectionism” within the acute or other sectors to allow Ambulance clinicians and others to relocate to useful and reasonable alternative duties across the NHS and the United Kingdom;
2.In pursuance of this aim to propose, through the NHS Staff Council, a feasibility study into the creation of a UK wide NHS ill-health re-deployment register.