How the ACCEND programme is supporting healthcare professionals

Macmillan Cancer Support is delighted to be the co-delivery strategic partner for ACCEND with the NHS England Cancer and Diagnostics Programme within the Workforce, Training and Education Directorate.

ACCEND is designed for the non-medical healthcare workforce including support workers, nursing associates, nurses, allied health professionals, pharmacists and psychologists in both generalist and specialist roles where they support people with cancer. This programme is the first of its kind in cancer across professional groups. It is designed to enhance recruitment and retention of people to roles working with people with cancer by providing associated education, training, learning and development opportunities.

The three key components of ACCEND

Simply, ACCEND is made up of three components:

1. Core Capabilities in Practice (CiP) at all levels of practice from supportive, assistive, pre-registration, registered, enhanced, advanced and consultant level practice.
2. Guidance on Cancer Career pathways
3. Guidance on education, training, learning, and development opportunities informed by the CiPs.
   
    

The ACCEND framework, launched in January 2023, provides the foundation for the overall programme and guides professionals working with people with cancer to:

• Understand which core CiPs they have achieved, those they should develop which are appropriate to their role and CiPs they may wish to develop to progress to another level of practice
• Identify education, training, learning and development opportunities which will help meet their needs
• Identify cancer career pathways available 

The ACCEND framework can be accessed and used by people across the UK and can also guide healthcare systems, employers and those that provide education and training with clearly set out Core Capabilities in Practice on which to base:

• Education programmes and curricula
• Performance development reviews 
• Sample job descriptions at different levels of practice

Education and training available on the Macmillan Learning Hub has been mapped to the ACCEND framework levels of practice and a guidance page is available on the hub.

The NHS England ACCEND learning hub is on the E-Learning for Health platform.

The ACCEND learning hub includes:

• The Foundations of Cancer Care - a nine module online course for anyone interested in learning more about cancer
• A toolkit aimed at the supportive and assistive workforce

Further developments to the NHS England ACCEND learning hub in 2024/2025 will include dedicated content developed for those at Registered, Enhanced towards Advanced level and those in Consultant and strategic leadership roles.

Over the coming year there are many activities planned within the ACCEND programme to support healthcare professionals and the wider healthcare and high education system. These include:

Launch of the bimonthly ACCEND Community of Practice with two meetings held since July with just over 100 people attending each one. This Community of Practice enables sharing of how ACCEND is being implemented in different parts of the UK with different professionals. Recordings from the community of practice meetings and other useful resources to support ACCEND implementation can be found via the NHS Futures Platform.

• Principles of cancer care course for those in supportive and assistive roles.
• Better understanding the workforce through a baseline workforce survey across England.
• An update on the current ACCEND framework to include both education and research careers.
• Digitisation of the framework to enhance the engagement and ease of use of the framework for healthcare professionals, employers and education providers.
• Development of UK wide pre-registration cancer curricula guidance for the University sector.

We are actively promoting the implementation of the framework, and in select cases have funded roles to support the development of the specialist nursing workforce. 

We are also delighted that Cancer Alliances in England are supporting implementation through their 2024/5 work plans. We hope that through their engagement the ACCEND implementation guides for healthcare professionals, employers and those providing education and training will become practical live documents for all. 

We also recommend you visit our Learning Hub to see how our modules link to ACCEND.

Further resources

Find out more about ACCEND.

If you have specific questions about ACCEND please contact the programme team at england.accend@nhs.net