We are delighted to announce we have been awarded two prestigious contracts with the Nursing and Midwifery Council and Cheshire West and Chester Council.
Cansford has been appointed to the National Midwifery Council’s (NMC) regulatory framework to undertake testing services for the organisation’s registration and fitness to practise processes.
The NMC’s core role is to regulate nursing and midwifery, setting the standards that professionals must meet to practise. Those standards apply wherever people work – in a hospital, in social care, in the community, in public health, or in education. The organisation also maintains the register of professionals eligible to practise.
Cansford Laboratories has been approved to carry out blood and hair testing services across the UK for the NMC’s admission and readmission register, and to provide reports for use by the NMC’s Professional Regulation directorate.
As the professional regulator of more than 700,000 nurses and midwives in the UK and nursing associates in England, the National Midwifery Council has an important role to ensure safe, effective, and kind nursing and midwifery that improves everyone’s health and wellbeing.
When joining the NMC register, a nurse, midwife or nursing associate must show that they are capable of safe and effective practice and that they are in good health. Adding Cansford Laboratories to its regulatory framework will enable the NMC to call on independent drug and alcohol testing to ensure this is the case and to support its action on the rare occasions where a concern has been raised about the health or conduct of one of its registered practitioners in this respect.
Cansford has also been awarded a contract by Cheshire West and Chester Council to provide drug, alcohol and DNA testing to the Council’s Children and Families Service. Commissioners at Cheshire West and Chester Council praised Cansford’s empathetic approach, which focussed on reducing stress for donors through less invasive sample collection techniques, faster turnaround times and new methods to help social workers communicate processes with donors.
Cansford’s MD, Kim Bagley, says: “It is a huge honour for us to be appointed onto the NMC framework to help uphold its high professional standards through hair and blood testing.
“It is also further recognition by an additional regulatory body that our testing capabilities meet the exacting requirements at this high level of inspection.
“We are also delighted to be working with Cheshire West and Cheshire Council in supporting the Council’s Children and Families Service. We pride ourselves on providing a fast and high-quality drug and alcohol testing service and are keen to help reduce stress for donors.”