North West Faculty for Advancing Practice
September 2026 update
For further information about the Faculty and the Centre for Advancing Practice please have a look at our page on the website.
Faculty News and Updates
Waiting List Open for Funding Applications
NHSE North West Faculty for Advancing Practice is pleased to announce the launch of the waiting list process to support educational training funding for MSc Advanced Clinical Practice Spring 2027 cohorts. The waiting list opened on 4th September 2026 and will close at 5pm on 1st October 2026. Organisations interested in securing funding support for Spring 2027 cohorts are encouraged to submit their details before the closing date.
Goodbye and Thank You
Debra Allcock left the Faculty this month to start her new role of Workforce Senior Manager (Transformation) within the Lancashire and South Cumbria and Greater Manchester System People Team after 5 ½ years of dedicated service to advanced practice across the North West. Debra has made a significant contribution to the development of advanced practice, including helping to establish the North West Faculty for Advancing Practice in 2021 and improving workforce data quality to support workforce planning. Through a collaborative approach, Debra has worked with colleagues across the region and nationally to create opportunities for workforce growth and development, ensuring equity of opportunity, showcasing transformation and exploring innovative solutions, leaving a lasting impact on the advanced practice workforce. We thank Debra for all that has been achieved and wish her every success in her new role.
South East Faculty for Advancing Practice new guide: 'Advanced Practice in Radiography Implementation Guide'
The South East Faculty for Advanced Practice have published a new guide, 'Advanced Practice in Radiography Implementation', which is available on the SE Learning Hub page. There is also a short video explainer by the SE Cancer & Diagnostics TPL, Loryn Caulfield.
The guide provides an overview of advanced practice in radiography and offers insights into topics including education and training, workforce planning, governance, supervision, and career development. It can be used to build services and teams which meet the needs of the population; retain experienced staff; support career development; strengthen multi-professional teams; demonstrate the organisation’s investment in its staff; enable holistic, high-quality, person-centred patient care delivery and support service redesign and transformation.
Updates: Greater Manchester Advanced Practice collaborative
The Greater Manchester Advanced Practice (AP) collaborative has demonstrated the value of a shared stakeholder approach in driving governance across the system.
Through the GM Advanced Practice Steering Group (chaired by Wendy Winnard and Diane Reid), partners from NHS providers, primary care, higher education institutions, and NHS England are working collectively to align priorities, share intelligence, and reduce variation.
This collaborative infrastructure supports a consistent approach to governance, underpinned by a standardised governance matrix and RAG-rating process; enabling organisations to transparently assess their maturity and identify gaps. Importantly, this work is aligned to the Greater Manchester Advanced Practice Strategy and its 5-year implementation plan, working towards advanced practice development contributing to wider system priorities, workforce transformation, and long-term service sustainability.
This coordinated approach is offering a learning community. With key benefits in helping to reduce duplication of effort, improve adoption of good practice, offers consistency in governance standards, and improving system-wide oversight. The network assists with peer to peer support for organisations at different stages to learn. It is enhancing communication across the sectors and offers connections for wider workforce transformation and service redesign, as set out within the GM strategic direction.
This is an exciting time for Advanced Practice within Greater Manchester, moving towards system-wide leadership that reduces silo working, strengthens collaboration to assist in evidencing the impact of the advanced practice workforce for patients and services.
Conferences, webinars and study days
Resources Now Available: NHS Employers Advanced Practice Governance Webinar
The recording and accompanying resources from the NHS Employers Advanced Practice Governance webinar are now available. Whether you attended the session or are catching up afterwards, the materials provide valuable insights to support advanced practice governance. Please see the links below.
Advanced Practice Mental Health Network Meeting: Building Our Community
Join colleagues from across the region for the next Advanced Practice Mental Health Network Meeting on the 30th September, 13:00 - 14:00 via MS Teams.
This free event is open to trainee, aspiring and established Advanced Practitioners working in mental health, offering an opportunity to connect with peers, share learning and strengthen our growing professional community.
For more information about the network, visit NHS Futures and search for Advanced Practice Mental Health Network.
To register and join the meeting, scan or click the QR code below:
Research funding and engagement opportunities
NIHR Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) Programme - Funding Opportunity
The NIHR Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) Programme is inviting outline applications for research proposals focused on the day-to-day practice of health and care services, with the potential to improve patient health, wellbeing and NHS service delivery. The programme supports high-quality quantitative and qualitative research, with a strong emphasis on patient and public involvement. This two-stage funding opportunity is open to research teams seeking to generate evidence that can directly benefit patients and service users. The outline application deadline is 28 October 2026 at 1.00pm.
NIHR Funding Opportunity: Improving Discharge Delivery Across Health and Social Care
The NIHR Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR) Programme is seeking applications for research that evaluates ways to improve discharge delivery across health and social care services. The funding call welcomes studies exploring patient, service and system-level improvements, including community-focused and integrated discharge pathways that support the shift of care from hospital to community settings. The opportunity covers discharge from acute, mental health and specialist inpatient services for both children and adults. This is a two-stage funding opportunity, with outline applications closing on 16 September 2026 at 1.00pm.
NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Application Development Awards
The NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme is offering Application Development Awards to support researchers in developing high-quality proposals for future HTA funding applications. Awards of up to £150,000 are available to help teams generate the evidence, partnerships and preparatory work needed to strengthen subsequent applications to the HTA Programme or relevant commissioned funding opportunities. This is a single-stage funding opportunity, with applications closing on 12 November 2026 at 13:00.
International Journal for Advancing Practice
Looking to stay up to date with the latest publications in the field of advancing practice? Wondering where to publish your latest research? Why not visit the International Journal for Advancing Practice.
If you have any queries, please contact england.advancedpractice@nhs.net