How we started
Back in February 1840 when we welcomed our first students, many people believed that education was only for the elite.
Our founders, James Kay-Shuttleworth and Derwent Coleridge, had other ideas. Big ideas. They started training orphans from the local workhouse to become teachers, changing lives by providing a route out of poverty.
Some people didn’t like it at the time but our founders weren’t afraid to think differently.
Many years on and we’re still a supportive community, providing life changing experiences for students. That’s who we are, that’s who we’ve always been.
The inspirational influence of our founders lives on. We're always looking for new and better ways of doing things. For Marjon Health and Wellbeing this means helping people to develop the skills to self-manage their conditions. It means a new community based healthcare model as opposed to the established medical one.
We help people to walk, become more active, eat more healthily and to manage their stress, all in a friendly supportive environment. We've been doing this now for over a decade and have had really successful outcomes for a sustained time, way beyond when people leave us.
Where we're going
The NHS Five Year Forward Plan next steps (2017) highlighted the challenges facing the NHS associated with an aging population and people living longer but often with complex health issues.
The priorities included shifting away from urgent and acute care to primary and community care, new ways of delivering care by integrating care locally into systems to realise efficiencies while enhancing patient safety, harnessing technology and specific challenges of cancer and mental health.
The NHS Long Term Plan (2019) progresses three key themes of getting the best start in life, delivering world class care for major health problems and supporting people to age well. Delivery of the NHS long term plan focuses on doing things differently, preventing ill health and tackling inequalities.
Locally the need to prioritise preventing ill health and inequality is essential, since Plymouth public health profiles illustrate lower life expectancy, higher health inequality and higher mortality rates from preventable diseases than benchmark. Within Plymouth the post-covid economic recovery plan identifies health as a priority skills shortage area.
The NHS People Plan identified the significant challenges in growing and transforming a workforce to deliver new models of care. The sustainability and transformation partnerships (STP) developed in 2016 are the vehicle through which system wide place-based approaches are operationalised to provide integrated care systems.
Regionally the work of both the Devon, and Cornwall and Isles of Scilly STPs have highlighted urgent workforce shortages within the region. We're proud to train the professionals of tomorrow.
Our vision - Health and wellbeing for life, for all
How will we get there?
We will produce graduates with the knowledge base and skillset needed to support, current and future, health care provision at a local and national level. We'll focus on enhancing life chances and employability across the region we continue to promote access to all learners, including mature applicants and those with non-traditional backgrounds.
We'll do this by working with our partners, we will ensure our delivery models support students to progress their career within health and social care. Our flexible health education programmes will provide innovative personalised learning, making the most of digital learning technologies to improve access across our region. We will focus our education on person-centred approaches which encourage self-care and adoption of healthy behaviours.
We'll develop promotion ready Marjon graduates with the skills to meet regional care needs while also ensuring they meet the required professional standards. We will develop Marjon graduates who are forward looking and willing to challenge and adopt new ways of thinking and working.
Our ambitions
