Funding Sources

There is no single source of funding support for social care employers for workforce development, education, training or assessment.

All those who need to manage the delivery of learning or workforce development programmes will need to consider a number of sources of funding.

Sources of public funding will have specific requirements to check the outcomes of the funding, and for financial audit to avoid double funding, and applications and claim processes will differ.

It is always important to check for up-to-date details. The Skills for Care Regional Committees and Regional Development Staff are the best sources of information and advice.

Employers are advised that their first stop in managing workforce development and gaining funding support will be to prepare a Workforce Development or Training Plan, establishing the development requirements for the business and identifying the individual staff development needs.

Skills for Care strongly recommends the National Minimum Data Set for Social Care as the basis for workforce planning
(see www.nmds-sc.org.uk).

Skills for Care recognises that the employers and employees are the most important investors in learning and qualification.

We recommend that employers should spend the equivalent of at least 3% of their workforce costs on developing their workforce.

We also agree with the Department of Health that, "The commissioning of social care services should include contribution to costs of establishing and maintaining an appropriately competent workforce" ('Building capacity and partnership in care' www.dh.gov.uk).

Skills for Care also recommends that individual employees should contribute 15% of the total cost of their training (includes fees, qualification registration costs, assessment, learning materials, time spent studying and required travel costs and time), but states specifically that this contribution should be made in time, not money, e.g. personal time spent compiling evidence for presentation to an NVQ assessor.

This was first stated in the 2000 national training strategy, Modernising the Social Care Workforce, appendix 7, and has been cited elsewhere since.

a guide to resources and funding

Skills for Care has compiled the guide to resources and funding to signpost employers and learners in the adult social care sector to a diverse range of resources and funding freely available to support individual, organisational and workforce development.

The guide below has both national and regional information that we hope you find useful.

a guide to funding and resources