New £5m health and social care training centre on track

Work is progressing on a new £5m new health and social care training centre at the University of Wolverhampton’s Telford Campus. 

The new Marches Centre of Excellence in Health and Social Care at the Telford Campus 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 involves the refurbishment and fit out of existing space in the Angad Paul Building at the Priorslee campus. Work is continuing on schedule, with latest additions to the project including a mezzanine level being installed along with partitions to create a new mock house.  

The University already offers Adult Nursing at the Telford Campus, and additional courses on offer will include Paramedic Science, Mental Health Nursing, Social Work Apprenticeship and a range of new Social Care courses.  

There are also ambitious plans to expand the course offering in the future to include Podiatry, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy. 

The Centre will create new skills and simulation facilities that can be used across health and social care disciplines. It 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. 

Tim Steele, Pro Vice-Chancellor, said: “We are delighted with the progress of the new Marches Centre for Excellence in Health and Social Care at the Telford Campus. Our aim is to provide an innovative and technologically advanced learning environment for the next generation of health and social care key workers.  

“This Centre will transform the training of professionals for the Marches area and enable us to meet local demand within the health and social care workforce.” 

Mandy Thorn, chair of the Marches LEP, said: “This is a hugely important investment in the skills and knowledge of our future health and care workforce and it is excellent to see it starting to take shape and progressing on schedule.” 

Overbury’s Birmingham-based team has been appointed as the contractor to lead the project. Also involved are architects Broadway Malyan, Faithful & Gould as the client-side project manager and Gleeds as Project Management and cost management services. 

Ben Cox, Project Manager at Overbury, said: “Works are proceeding on programme with the new mezzanine being installed along with partitions to create the new mock house. The mechanical and electrical is significantly progressing and feature joinery items are currently been manufactured offsite ready to be installed in the new year.” 

The Centre will also include 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 April 2021. 

For further information about studying health courses at the University, visit: www.wlv.ac.uk/health