Health board gets $1m training boost from Tindall Foundation

The Tindall Foundation is committing more than $1.4 million to new training and employment initiatives as a result of work it undertook after last year's prime ministerial Jobs Summit.

Since February the foundation has been looking for opportunities to improve long-term employment prospects for communities that are most vulnerable to job losses.

A Counties Manukau District Health Board project aimed at growing its workforce within its borders will receive $1 million over two years.

The funds will be shared by community organisations such as schools, scholarship providers, tertiary institutions and the DHB with the aim of putting more than 200 new nurses, midwives and other health practitioners into training.

Health board chief executive Geraint Martin said the programme was urgently needed.

"The staffing issues we face are business-critical, and it is no longer acceptable or possible to fill positions primarily from overseas sources. We simply must invest in people in South Auckland to help create a more effective pipeline to get them to work for us."

The foundation has also tagged a sum estimated at $400,000 to develop the initial stages of a Pacific peoples' tertiary provider run along similar lines to Te Wananga o Aotearoa.

An educational trust made up of former All Black Michael Jones' sports academy, the Pasifika Education Centre and Pacific Business Trust will work with the wananga on the initiative.

Tindall Foundation manager Trevor Gray said: "They're both transformative ideas, and they're both cross-sector approaches to job creation where groups are working together."

Warehouse founder Sir Stephen Tindall said he was impressed by "innovative" ideas which had come out of the Jobs Summit.

"From these projects I'm sure we will find new and effective ways to improve access to employment and get people into jobs, because jobs are at the heart of our quality of life and wellbeing," he said.

Other projects to receive funding included the Kaikohe Community Trust, which is working on its section of the national cycleway, a Hamilton-based programme supporting long-term unemployed into work and the Mayors' Task Force for Jobs.