Training for health professionals on consanguinity

NHS England is seeking to procure a training package to be accessible online to health and social care professionals on cultural sensitivity and inter-cultural communication skills, genetic risk associated with consanguinity and referral pathways. An online training course is currently available as part of e-Learning for Health's (eLfH) Genomics Education Programme and this proposed training will need to link up with this. The eLearning modules will be used to support initial and refresher training sessions for midwives and health visitors taking on new roles, as well as other professionals working within areas of high need receiving support/investment. Following evaluative feedback, the eLearning modules will need to be refined to ensure utility for independent study and made more widely available to interested healthcare professionals.

This training package will be comprised of six 45 minute modules covering:

• Social and cultural aspects of consanguinity

• Genetics and consanguinity what are the implications? Levels and patterns of risk.

• Why is this a health care issue? Unmet need and missed opportunities

• Policy developments over time; multi-professional working and developing a coordinated response

• Engaging under-served communities with genetics: what are the challenges and opportunities? Culturally competent and effective communication about genetic risk and genetic services

• Community Engagement/raising genetic literacy

• Transcultural genetic counselling for genetic counsellors

• Other Specific sessions developed for Health visitors, GPs and midwives specific to their job roles and referral routes

• Assessing success, monitoring progress

We will require:

• A scoping session

• Design and development of eLearning sessions, including project management and instructional design services

• Graphic design services

• Animation

• Implementation on an electronic learning site which can be accessed for free by NHS professionals

• A communication strategy

• Evaluation of the modules and changes made accordingly.

The budget for the development and delivery of this training package is £32,000 inc. VAT.

We are aiming to start the project in August 2021 and launch the training package by October 2021 at the latest.