It is an educational programme open to all health and care staff working across the Humber and Norht Yorkshire region. Participants can be registered or unregistered health and care professionals, VSCE staff or colleagues working across the wider health system who will learn together in a cohort over a twelve month period. The programme focuses on enhancing generalist skills – the areas of practice which span all specialties and professions such as providing person-centred care, working sustainably in complex systems, reducing health inequalities and managing patients with multiple interacting comorbidities. It is a professional development programme, and as such, managers who support services to become more integrated, patient focused, sustainable and efficient will also find they can learn and contribute, and bring this learning back to their workplaces.

This is a trailblazer site as part of a national programme to enhance generalist skills.

There is an enhance programme covering South Yorkshire which started in June 2025. This is run by the South Yorkshire ICS with funding from NHS England. The programme has been developed in close collaboration with the existing programme working across Humber and North Yorkshire to ensure that delivery is complementary whilst being tailored to local health and care needs. Further information can be found on the South Yorkshire Enhance programme website.

For enhance enable, the time commitment is about 4-6 hours per module. This is all independent, self-directed learning with suggested workplace activities, but additional enrichment activities are under development across the region. This learning is flexible, and modules can be done in any order.

For enhance explore, most people will need to commit about 4 hours a week to cover the programme, although this learning can be taken as deeply or as broadly as you wish. Some programmes are divided into six eight-week blocks, others are split into seven modules, each lasting seven weeks.

In this latter case, six modules are core and the seventh is an applied module. There are fixed points at the beginning and end of each module to allow the cohort to learn together, with flexible, guided self-learning in between.

Definitely. There is no level of prior academic learning required to participate. Most of the learning is self-directed so you can tailor your learning to your own interests and styles. There are options for learning via practical skills, projects, visits and shadowing, as well as more traditional learning such as lectures, workshops, reading, e-learning, videos and podcasts. There is no formal assessment but participants will be expected to reflect on their learning throughout the course.

In the explore course we are looking for enthusiasm and engagement, with a willingness to think differently, rather than any particular academic achievement.

Please visit the Foundation Enhance webpage for more information.