Reason

Application numbers

i. Trainees with a

disability or illness

50

ii. Trainees with caring responsibilities

195

iii. Welfare and wellbeing

161

iv. Unique

opportunities

16

v. Religious commitment

0

vi. Non-medical development

3

vii. Flexibility for training & career development

28

vii. Other

40

 TOTAL

493

1

There is no SLA to process applications neither internally nor published to trainees when an application has been submitted. Trainee doesn’t have an indication of where their application are with the processing and receiving an outcome.

2

Given the new policy to extend flexible training, there has been a large number of applications and it has meant that the categories no longer exist. This in turn has made the triaging of applications almost ad-hoc when it comes to prioritising the processing as and when the applications are received for specialty. E.g. there is no Local process to prioritise the processing of Childcare/Disability/Health reasons applications over wellbeing ones.
Although the numbers are less for Dental and GP in SWP.

3

SW uses different forms for 1) Change of percentage 2) New Application 3) Notification of Appeal. All these forms can be difficult to manage when submitted to HEE via emails. When submitted to HEE they go to personal email addresses of Specialty Education Programme managers which can be difficult to triage as to what the purpose of the email was from the trainees.

4

The role of Education Specialty Programme Managers in HEE is unclear in the approval process. For Caring responsibilities, currently they only rely on the TPS TPD having ticked the box on the form which is an assumption that LTFT will be accommodated by the Employing Trust and therefore is an “approval” by default.

5

There hasn’t been any rejections and unclear on the implementation of this part of the process. No real guidance on approval responsibilities and process.

6

SW has a documented process with Trainee, Associate Dean and Postgraduate Dean involved, preparing cases statements, with timescales made aware to the parties involved. However, in practice, this has not yet happened as there have been no rejections yet.

7

For specialty and Dental, there is no monitoring of applications through reports. GP only, uses a tracker spreadsheet.

8

There is no tangible data on the number of applications received apart from referring to TIS.

9

There is a gap between Trainee and Trust and Trainee and HEE in the application process in the sense that application may have been submitted (e.g. for Disability) where supporting evidences are still being awaited for but the trainee has already started in the Trust as LTFT and NHS SW becoming aware of this until later. What constitutes an approval, isn’t defined.

10

An LTFT trainee may have more ARCPs than a full time doctor in training. It becomes a challenge in specialty school in deciding on the progression date/point.