Eighty per cent of healthcare assistants are calling for regulation of their role to enable standards to be set and patient care outcomes improved.

Entry qualifications must remain the same to ensure standards of numeracy and literacy are high. Mature students and younger potential nurses must achieve necessary entry qualifications to maintain this.

What would be the possibilty to assist with better training for quality health care assistants and to and to train them in a one year foundation course before their entry for nursing studies? I believe the training of health care assistants in the UK is not adequate and needs more practical training with practical facilitating and modules for Literacy and numeracy that can be offered within the curriculum of the health care assistants curriculum. The best quality potential nurses can be identified after basic nursing have been done for at least 12 months full time and ongoing facilitating is offered in the hospitals and nursing homes.