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Making Kent and Medway a great place to live, work and learn

Our pledge: We will make Kent and Medway a great place for our colleagues to live, work and learn.


A workforce that includes people from all backgrounds and communities: There are more than 80,000 health and care colleagues across a range of services based in Kent and Medway. We will work with all partner organisations to embed cultures that promotive civility, respect and inclusion, providing shared talent and development opportunities and education for leaders and teams.

There will be a shared action to grow and celebrate our diversity and be representative of our communities, including systematically addressing bias, giving staff a stronger and more confident voice and developing colleagues from underrepresented groups and celebrating diversity at all times.


Looking after our people: Wherever people work in health and care in Kent and Medway, we want it to be a great place to work and learn. We will develop wrap-around wellbeing services for our workforce. These will support those with illnesses, as well as empowering colleagues to proactively manage their wellbeing.

We will identify specific interventions that align with our population health priorities, particularly with colleagues who are experiencing health inequalities.


Growing our workforce and skills: The demand for staff is outstripping supply and, along with an ageing workforce, this is putting increased pressure on our teams.

We will create an attractive employment proposition for health and care. It will be one that develops and retains our exceptional local workforce and attracts people into careers in health and care from within and beyond Kent and Medway, reducing the need for expensive agency workers.

To do this, organisations within the integrated care system will work together to attract and retain professionals, work with education and training providers to develop exciting and diverse careers and training opportunities, provide talented and capable leadership and offer flexible and interesting careers.

We will build on our Kent and Medway Health and Care Academy by working in partnership with local employers, schools, careers services and education partners to create a robust pipeline of local workforce for future years; developing new roles, such as apprenticeships and new ways of working, such as cross-organisational portfolio roles with the skills and digital capability to be ready for the modern workplace.

We want to develop programmes that help to reduce long-term and youth unemployment, bring young people into work and support carers as part of our wider workforce.


Building ‘one’ workforce: Working across health and care partnerships, we will use our large health and care employers in each area, such as hospitals, to develop one workforce locally, create integrated neighbourhood teams with embedded flexible working and mobility, which are enabled through digital technology and capabilities.

Through this, we hope to reduce unnecessary commuting and, in turn, our carbon footprint. We also have a vital and valued volunteer workforce; we will make sure we celebrate its invaluable work but also seek input to shape, improve and deliver services


We asked people to share their views between February and August 2023. We have now closed our ideas boards. Thank you for your contributions!

Our pledge: We will make Kent and Medway a great place for our colleagues to live, work and learn.


A workforce that includes people from all backgrounds and communities: There are more than 80,000 health and care colleagues across a range of services based in Kent and Medway. We will work with all partner organisations to embed cultures that promotive civility, respect and inclusion, providing shared talent and development opportunities and education for leaders and teams.

There will be a shared action to grow and celebrate our diversity and be representative of our communities, including systematically addressing bias, giving staff a stronger and more confident voice and developing colleagues from underrepresented groups and celebrating diversity at all times.


Looking after our people: Wherever people work in health and care in Kent and Medway, we want it to be a great place to work and learn. We will develop wrap-around wellbeing services for our workforce. These will support those with illnesses, as well as empowering colleagues to proactively manage their wellbeing.

We will identify specific interventions that align with our population health priorities, particularly with colleagues who are experiencing health inequalities.


Growing our workforce and skills: The demand for staff is outstripping supply and, along with an ageing workforce, this is putting increased pressure on our teams.

We will create an attractive employment proposition for health and care. It will be one that develops and retains our exceptional local workforce and attracts people into careers in health and care from within and beyond Kent and Medway, reducing the need for expensive agency workers.

To do this, organisations within the integrated care system will work together to attract and retain professionals, work with education and training providers to develop exciting and diverse careers and training opportunities, provide talented and capable leadership and offer flexible and interesting careers.

We will build on our Kent and Medway Health and Care Academy by working in partnership with local employers, schools, careers services and education partners to create a robust pipeline of local workforce for future years; developing new roles, such as apprenticeships and new ways of working, such as cross-organisational portfolio roles with the skills and digital capability to be ready for the modern workplace.

We want to develop programmes that help to reduce long-term and youth unemployment, bring young people into work and support carers as part of our wider workforce.


Building ‘one’ workforce: Working across health and care partnerships, we will use our large health and care employers in each area, such as hospitals, to develop one workforce locally, create integrated neighbourhood teams with embedded flexible working and mobility, which are enabled through digital technology and capabilities.

Through this, we hope to reduce unnecessary commuting and, in turn, our carbon footprint. We also have a vital and valued volunteer workforce; we will make sure we celebrate its invaluable work but also seek input to shape, improve and deliver services


We asked people to share their views between February and August 2023. We have now closed our ideas boards. Thank you for your contributions!