Infection Prevention and Control competence requirements for health and social care staff

Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) is a key element of our work in social care and is vital to the well being of those people we support and care for. Good infection prevention and control are essential to ensure that people who use health and social care services receive safe and effective care. Effective prevention and control of infection must be part of everyday practice and be applied consistently by everyone.

Last year the Department of Health launched the Code of Practice to support effective infection prevention and control. This document gave specific guidance to a range of organisations including care homes and domiciliary care agencies regarding their duties and responsibilities in IPC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

To support this Skills for Health were commissioned to identify specific competences for different staff groups involved in IPC. The project identified core and generic National Occupational Standards for IPC for different staff groups in both health and social care settings. Skills for Care and Development have collaborated with the work in the latter stages and believe that it holds great value for the social care sector.

National Occupational Standards (NOS) can be used to

• Support appraisal
• Support specific learning and development opportunities
• Support the development of appropriate policies and procedures in the organisation

This new resource specifies core, advanced and additional NOS for health and social care staff in direct and non direct care roles. Although it is written from a health perspective and relates to the health career framework the key content is a valuable resource to the social care sector. The identified NOS are reproduced in full in Appendix 2 in the document below.

Infection Prevention and Control - Staff working together

National Occupational Standards review

The project to revise the Infection Prevention and Control National Occupational Standards (NOS) is now almost complete. The NOS have been submitted and should be available soon in 2012.

Qualification development

It is important that the social care sector embraces these NOS as they are a key part of the work and services we deliver. Now that the final NOS have been submitted we have started development of new units to reflect competence in social care. These units will be added to the optional banks in the level 2, level 3 and level 5 diplomas and should be available for delivery by September 2012 at the latest.