A new £5million centre for health and social care training is set to be created at the University of Wolverhampton’s Telford Campus.
The new Marches Centre of Excellence in Health, Allied Health and Social Care will provide state-of-the-art training facilities for the next generation of key workers.
The Centre, which has received £3.5m Growth Deal funding from the Marches Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), will enable students to gain hands-on, real-life experience of the profession they will enter and ensure they have the skills and knowledge to benefit employers.
The project will involve transforming existing space in the Angad Paul Building at the Telford Campus in Priorslee to create new skills and simulation facilities that can be used across health and social care disciplines.
The Centre will proactively address shortfalls in health professionals across the Marches area, with an emphasis on local people and students who will become key workers within the area.
The new facilities will include a room for paramedic science and other disciplines, a mock house, various teaching spaces and new student social spaces.
There will also be an immersive reality suite for emergency planning and simulations of a variety of clinical and non-clinical settings, interview and mock office environments for social work training and student collaboration spaces.
A new Anamotage Room will be created, following on from the success of similar innovations at the University’s Wolverhampton and Walsall Campus. This will feature a state-of-the-art Anamotage table which allows students to ‘see’ inside the human body.
The first phase of the project will see the development of new academic courses, apprenticeships and Continuous Professional Development (CPD) courses at the Telford Campus from March 2021.
Vice-Chancellor, Professor Geoff Layer, said: “The University is committed to training and upskilling those wishing to make a difference in key worker professions. The new Marches Centre for Excellence in Health, Allied Health and Social Care is part of our ambition to create a more innovative and technologically enabled learning environment. This new development will transform the training of health and social care professionals for the Marches area and we would like to thank the Marches Local Enterprise Partnership for sharing and supporting our vision.
“This exciting project builds upon the introduction of nursing provision at our Telford Campus in September 2019. This was developed in collaboration with Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust and we are continuing to work with local NHS and other health and social care partners to develop courses that meet local demand.”
Mandy Thorn, chair of the Marches LEP, said: “The vital role that key workers play in our society has been all too evident in recent months and this pioneering new centre will ensure that future generations of health and care professionals from this region can be trained in the latest skills and to the highest standards.
“That is good both for the physical and mental wellbeing of this region and its economic vitality. We are delighted to have been able to support the project.”
Involved in the project are architects Broadway Malyan, Faithful & Gould as the client-side project manager and Gleeds as Project Management and cost management services.