The knock-on effect of the Government’s £6.2 billion cuts in public spending has been particularly savage for local government agencies. But in order to survive, will they be tempted to sacrifice the long-term viability of their services for the short-term accountability to their budgets?

Councils will need to find ways of reducing costs in all areas and it is believed that the health and social care sector will be the hardest hit. Inevitably headcounts will be slashed, but one of the earliest casualties of the battle to reduce costs will be a cut in training budgets for personal development of the remaining staff. A recent survey conducted by the National Care Association of residential care providers’ shows that more than a quarter of providers have made cuts in training over the past 12 months and many believe that trends will worsen during the next financial year.

But is this just a short-term fix? By slashing training budgets and the skills development of their staff, will this knee-jerk reaction jeopardise the ongoing need to deliver highly skilled high quality services to some of the most vulnerable members of our society? Specialist consultant Pip Mason trains people in the skills they need to help service-users change their behaviour in a variety of areas. Her clients are drawn from social service departments, health authorities and trusts, prisons and colleges and training courses address a wide range of behavioural change issues such as diet and exercise, addictions, offending behaviour and college attendance.

Pip believes that 2011 will be key once the public sector cuts bite. She said: “The media spotlight is firmly focussed on councils and local authorities and they are acutely aware of the need to justify both internal and external expenditure. Training is an easy thing to cut although logically if you want fewer people to be achieving more efficiency, then training is more important than ever. Increasingly councils are trying to cut the length of training courses and I am frequently asked to run one-day courses on topics that really need 2-3 days. They are adamant that they cannot afford more so it’s one day or nothing. This is a waste of time and precious money because people cannot become competent in developing a new set of counselling skills in one day. They can learn about a given approach, but will not be competent to carry it out, so there will no significant change in their practice. In my view, this is a classic case of ‘spoiling the ship for a ha’peth of tar.”

Since the cuts were announced, many organisations have started to restructure their workforce, but because they don’t know who will be in what job in six months time, it is difficult for managers to plan their future training needs. Unfortunately some organisations are actually wasting training budgets by trying to do things ‘on the cheap’. One popular option is to send a single person on a training course. They return with all the materials and attempt to teach the course to the rest of the team, “so they will all benefit from the training.” This has two major disadvantages. Firstly, the person delegated to do the presentation is unlikely to be a skilled trainer so while they may have the core materials, they lack the experience, knowledge and delivery expertise to facilitate effective skills transfer. Trying to encapsulate a full day training session into a one hour management update meeting is optimistic to say the least, especially when you’ve only just been introduced to the concepts yourself. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, organisations are not budgeting the time or money for any follow up supervision or mentoring to help them put their new skills into practice.

The outcome is that within a few weeks, the learning has dissipated rather than being integrated and embedded within the practice. But that slight disadvantage can be easily overcome, after all the manager gets to tick all the boxes, targets have been met and the whole team have been ‘trained’ in the topic and all it cost was one course place and an hour’s team meeting!

Some councils have looked at saving money by running training courses in-house or at a local hotel or community resource believing that this is cheaper than using purpose built training venues. Pip believes that this is a false economy. She said: “Increasingly I am expected to run courses in totally unsuitable poorly ventilated rooms Often rooms have spare furniture and equipment piled up in the corner, which restricts any possibility of splitting into groups for experiential learning, diminishing the efficacy of the training. Refreshment breaks are unstructured and consist of waiting for a small kettle to boil several times whilst somebody has to nip to the shops for supplies! And with inhouse training there is always the danger of busy fraught people taking advantage of break times to rush back to their offices to check their emails or make urgent calls. They will then get nabbed by a colleague and become embroiled in some crisis so they miss the next bit of training and lose the thread of the learning. This is frustrating for the delegate and the trainer and is definitely not value for money to the organisation.”

Pip Mason’s courses are run both in-house and through open courses in Birmingham at the Beeches Conference and Training venue. She firmly believes that the added value of using a purpose built training venue can be a justifiable budgetary allowance. She said: “the location has a different ‘feel’ to the in-house one; everybody turns up even if they have to drive through snow or start out at 4am. Also the level of commitment is higher because people place greater value on an external course; they may have fought hard to get funding and they will want to make the most of it. Because the venue is built specifically for training and learning, delegates can relax and leave the stress of work behind them for a few days. “

“Similarly hotels are less effective as they are not geared to the needs of the business community, and often the training room is the banqueting suite with small uncomfortable chairs, which soon cause discomfort, making it difficult to focus on the training. AV equipment is often hired in for the day and arrives with no technical support if there are hitches. Mealtimes can also be a problem in hotels because their core clientele want to relax over lunch. Dedicated training venues understand that delegates only have a 45-60 minutes window between sessions so they cater for people promptly which leaves them time to relax before resuming studies.”

Another area local authorities are looking to save money is to replace some professionally qualified staff with ‘assistants’ who can carry out tasks previously undertaken by ‘expensive’ colleagues. So now we have teaching assistants, health care assistants and support workers. Although this makes sense, it must be recognised that these assistants need good quality supervision and support as in a bid to save money there is the risk that they will be pressurised into taking over more and more tasks for which they may not be equipped.

This change in care by qualified staff is now being seen across all sectors. Historically ward sisters supervised the distribution of meals. Now this task is routinely carried out by domestic staff, which on the face of it, makes sense. However it is vital that they understand how important it is that frail and sick patients receive food that is both nutritionally balanced and also appropriate to their culture. Some patients physically need assistance in eating the food, so the domestic’s help and patience is a big part of the job – there is much more to it than simply distributing then clearing away the plates. Of course domestic staff can be trained to carry out these tasks and many of them will be ‘naturals’, but it is vital that saving money does not become a greater priority at the expense of patient care.

David Cameron has recently announced his ‘Big Society’ programme, which hinges greatly on the services of volunteers across many disciplines. Without doubt, volunteers have a great deal to offer and it provides a wonderful opportunity to bring a diversity of people into a helping role. But they must not be seen as a cheap option. If they are to be of real benefit to the community, organisations must invest in their recruitment and provide ongoing support and training.

Perhaps a surprising casualty of the training budget cuts will be the trainer themselves. Professionals like Pip Mason invest in their own development by regularly attending conferences to keep up to date and talk to others in the field about new developments. Inevitably, the cuts will mean less work opportunities for them which results in a dip in their income. They are constantly under pressure from clients to reduce their fees to win the work, but to do this they would then have to cut back on their own career development. It is a vicious circle that has a negative impact on both trainer and client and ultimately service users.

The ongoing value of staff development training cannot be emphasised strongly enough. With jobs becoming scarcer staff are even paying for their own training to maximise their position in a competitive job market. Swingeing budget cuts will without doubt mean there will be fewer front line professionals available to carry out the vital services that the public expect and demand from their local authorities and care providers. If training budgets are then pared to the bone it will inevitably result in staff demotivation, poor quality service delivery and a reputation to match. It could even undo all the good work that the service may have provided in the past. Let’s hope for all our sakes that training does not become a major casualty in the war of spending cuts.