About First Response
Learn about our mission and core values, and what makes us different to other agencies.
Who we are
We provide a best in class uniquely sourced and comprehensively trained talent pool of professionals for Health and Social Care, including specialist and residential settings. Our board of directors, stakeholders and advisors from across NHS, Local Government and the VCSE sector provide us with a unique perspective allowing us to operate a model that is co-designed and produced with the with the advancement of workforce policy and quality practice at its forefront.
In a market containing countless recruitment agencies and brands from large corporates to SME’s we separate ourselves with an altruistic ambition to serve the sector and the staff ahead of our own commercial gain.
Our partnership with Great Minds Together
First Response Health & Care staffing agency are focused on collaborating exclusively with one organisation that has clear not-for-profit goals in order to ensure a concentrated impact on the health and care system. This strategic partnership with Great Minds Together enables us to align resources and expertise with an organisation dedicated to driving meaningful change. By channelling efforts toward a single entity, our agency can ensure that all staff provided are not only skilled and qualified, but also deeply committed to the mission of transforming health and social care practices. Such a focused approach allows for tailored training and integration of staff into the organisation’s values, leading to cohesive teamwork and enhanced service delivery that prioritises the well-being of the individuals it serves, as well as the First Response staffing team.
Additionally, by prioritising therapeutic support within our staffing solutions, we can contribute significantly to advancing comprehensive mental health care across the nation. As therapeutic support plays a critical role in addressing the holistic needs of individuals, having a dedicated team specifically trained in these methodologies enhances the quality and consistency of care provided. This precedent-setting collaboration can serve as a model for other organisations, promoting the adoption of therapeutic principles nationwide. Through this singular focus on not-for-profit goals and therapeutic support, our agency helps reshape the future of health and social care, advocating for a system that values and implements compassionate, preventative, and rehabilitative strategies to improve social and health outcomes for all.
First Response want to change the landscape when it comes to providing agency staff. Encouraging a move away from the stagnant model of recruitment agencies that have little to no meaningful responsibility in respect of operational care, and rather working in a truly integrated way with an organisation that wishes to ensure impactful and radical changes to our health and care system, including an overall aim to help ensure a better, and more effective use of spend of our public funds.
Together we have a bespoke focus and passion for improving our nations wellbeing, understanding of Neurodiversity and Mental Health and system wide change.
How we work
We do this by aligning our approach to recruiting, retaining, rewarding, developing and training to the NHS Workforce and Long Term Plans objectives amongst other locally led strategic and mandatory requirements.
We understand the value of our ability to provide a new and unique approach to assisting our clients and wider stakeholders across the NHS and Local Government in delivering future workforce agendas such as the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan and the Health and Care Act 2022 and are therefore structured to not only provide an essential talent pool to assist in the required provisions and placements of first class nursing and healthcare professionals into a variety of settings, but also ensure those professionals are provided with continuous learning and professional development irrespective of them being exclusive to our agency’s job opportunities or indeed placed by FRH&C at all.
We seek to create a dedicated community of practice for all of our registered and eligible professionals, using and applying the income we generate to ensuring the future of standards are maintained and improved, by caring for the carers/professionals, upskilling them and creating employment pathways and ensuring employee development opportunities are available.
We seek to do this for both experienced and young carers, in spite of the inability to place them into many of the higher grade and lucratively sought after roles most all recruitment agencies may prioritise and focus upon, as we realise that while they are a smaller opportunities to place and therefore generate revenue against, they are the entire future of nursing and care.
We do not wish to ring-fence any professional who registers on our rosters to work exclusively and be placed by us, we aspire to develop people irrespective, and we realise that the value of our network, community of practice and organisation is the thing that links us, not a contractual obligation or demand.
We are aligned to the NHS 10 Year Plan
Following the publication of the 10 Year Health Plan, the government will publish an updated mandate, to support longer-term planning in the NHS aligned with a long-term vision for health. Our decision to work exclusively with our only client “Great Minds Together” we can ensure that we are truly contributing to two of the strategic shifts directly and many of the aspirations of the shifts’ outcomes as a consequence.
Through the 10 Year Health Plan, the government will focus on 3 strategic shifts, moving care from:
- hospital to community
- sickness to prevention
- analogue to digital
These shifts will help to:
- cut waiting times for care
- reduce the amount of time spent in ill health
- tackle health inequalities
- reduce the lives lost to the biggest killers – cancer, cardiovascular disease and suicide
- make the NHS sustainable in the long term