With our wealth of experience and expertise, Skills for Care can support the sector to create a better-led, skilled and valued adult social care workforce.
We offer dedicated support in the following areas:
It’s important that staff are equipped with the right skills and knowledge to meet current and future needs in our communities. We can support you to ensure your workforce has the competencies and confidence to deliver high quality care and support.
Leading through digital change programme
This programme is a national development between Skills for Care and the National Care Forum and provides an opportunity to learn practical skills and gain confidence to lead effectively through the digital future of adult social care. It's designed for adult social care managers who want to lead digital transformation in their organisations but don’t quite know where to start or how to overcome the unique challenges in the sector.
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Moving up programme
This programme supports managers or aspiring managers from Black and Asian minority groups to drive progress in their careers. It's designed to empower people who are determined to advance their careers but face obstacles hindering their progress. The programme has had a significant impact on the participants who’ve taken part over the last 12 years.
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Nurse leadership development programme
This programme is specifically tailored to meet the needs of registered nurses working in a leadership role across adult social care. The programme increases leadership capabilities and creates opportunities for leaders to experience shared learning opportunities and develop greater understanding of leadership models and theories to support the development of new ideas and enhance leadership practices.
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Employers have told us that a values-based approach to recruitment and retention results in lower recruitment costs, lower staff turnover and better staff performance.
We offer two different programmes that offer practical, values-based strategies to strengthen recruitment, support staff development, and reduce turnover.
They include seminars, tailored one-to-one support and personalised data retention reports. Providers can book onto one of our open access dates or the programmes can be commissioned by providers specifically for their organisation, or by local authorities and integrated care systems on behalf of providers in their area.
See our values-based recruitment support programmes
Creating a positive workplace culture
This seminar offers a supportive, interactive environment where participants can learn, share ideas and ask questions. Highlights include hands-on exercises applying 'A positive culture toolkit for adult social care', along with guided sessions to explore workplace norms and identify strategies for improvement. Engaging in group discussions will help attendees build confidence and develop a tailored action plan for fostering a positive workplace culture.
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Meeting Care Quality Commission (CQC) standards is essential for any regulated adult social care provider to deliver Good or Outstanding care. We can support you to demystify the inspection process and develop practical strategies to prepare for CQC inspections and improve your rating.
We offer seminars to support managers and teams less familiar with CQC inspection to be better prepared and more confident, and one which presents a step-by-step approach to driving improvements where participants will gain insights into successful recovery strategies from a 'requires improvement' or 'inadequate' rating.
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Evidencing CQC safe and effective staffing through workforce planning
As part of your CQC assessment you'll need to be able to demonstrate your service has safe and effective staffing, with a workforce able to respond quickly, within a well governed and sustainable service. This seminar will help you embed systems and processes to ensure staff are competent and supported to provide safe, effective, and person-centred care. It will mean you have fewer compliance issues during CQC assessments and help you to make financial savings.
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Skills for Care is the leading source of adult social care workforce intelligence and an official statistics provider, having been added to the Official Statistics Order 2023. We use the information collected in the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) to create robust estimates for the size of the whole adult social care sector and characteristics of the workforce.
Our estimates show that we’ll need an extra 25% more posts (440,000) by 2035 if the number of adult social care posts grows proportionally to the projected number of people aged 65 and over in the population.
That’s why it’s so important to start thinking not only about how to boost short-term capacity but how to sustain the long-term needs of your workforce.
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