Get involved in our work

Skills for Care have been working with the sector to develop additional resources to support the delivery and achievement of the Care Certificate across the following specialisms: dementia, mental health and learning disability. We’ve also developed a module to support lone working.

They’ll help to apply the Care Certificate when working in specialised areas and are being designed to support the delivery of induction to new workers or to experienced workers who have no or little knowledge about the specialism.

What does this mean?

• Content and examples have been given showing how The Care Certificate standards and assessment could be put into the context for the specialised setting/service.
• They provide examples of how delivery and assessment can be put into context within the specialised areas.
• They provide an overview of how the content of the Care Certificate could be considered in their specialised area of work.

The use of these resources isn’t compulsory, and won’t impact the current approach and requirements of induction or the content of the Care Certificate which remains unchanged. 

We’re looking for interested parties to test and feedback on our draft resources throughout the month of February 2020.

Does your service support people with dementia, learning disabilities or mental health conditions and are you actively delivering or supporting workers to achieve the Care Certificate?

Are you actively delivering or supporting lone workers to achieve the Care Certificate?

If you can answer yes to either of the above questions’ we’d love to hear from you.

We’re looking for providers who would be prepared to apply and test the resources in the actual delivery, achievement and assessment of the Care Certificate.

You can get involved in different ways: 

1.    Take part in a scoping webinar (approx. 90 mins). This will include an overview of the project, details of the testing required, resources, expectations and activities.

2.    Provide feedback through a telephone interview (approx. 60 mins), questions will be provided prior to the interview.

3.    We’ll visit your service and observe the resources in use, such as through delivery of your induction, assessment and review of a worker’s knowledge and competence in line with the Care Certificate standards (approx. 120 mins).

If you’d like to take part in the testing of these resources, please complete the short survey by 20 January 2020.  It’ll take no more than five minutes to complete.

After the closing date we’ll be in touch to confirm next steps.

Click here to start the survey. 

We’re conducting a piece of user research to investigate how to make it easier for you to find what you need on our website and we’d really value your help.

We’ve developed a card sort task where you’ll be asked to organise cards of content into groups that make sense to you and belong together.

This shouldn't take longer than 10 minutes to complete and the results will help us to understand how people like you prefer to group and find information on the Skills for Care website.

Launch the card sorting task

 We want to find out what your staff think about working in the sector to help improve their experience.

This online survey is the first of its kind for adult social care and it’s the North West that is starting the conversation about improving the experience of working in the sector. To take part, you’ll be sent a survey link to share with your employees.

Find out more.

The survey is being undertaken by Skills for Care and Local Government Association, supported by Department for Health and Social Care, Care Quality Commission (CQC) and North West Association of Directors of Adult Social Services.

We're currently reviewing the learning and development opportunities for leaders and managers across the adult social care sector to check that they're fit for purpose, both now and in the future.

We want to ensure leaders and managers can develop the knowledge and skills that enable them to not only lead their services with confidence and competence, but that challenges them to be innovative and inspirational leaders, guiding and developing services and teams that truly meet the goals and needs of the people they support.

We've developed a consultation survey to capture your views on the following three qualifications:

• Level 4 Certificate in Principles of Leadership and Management in Adult Care 2
• Level 4 Diploma in Adult Care 3
• Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management in Adult Social Care

You can choose to answer the questions for one, two or all three qualifications and it'll take no more than 20 minutes to complete the full survey.

The survey will close at 17:00 on 30 January 2020.

Take the survey.

In November 2019, the Government announced the introduction of mandatory training in learning disability and autism for all health and social care staff, relevant to their role. This was in response to a consultation on the proposal of mandatory training. 

The consultation was held following the second annual report of the Learning Disability Mortality Review (LeDeR) Programme, which recommended that mandatory learning disability training should be provided to all staff, delivered in conjunction with people with learning disabilities and their families.

There will now be a series of trials to design and test a new training package, ahead of a wider roll-out.

Health Education England and Skills for Care are now working with the Department of Health and Social Care to find partners for these trials. We will be appointing a number of training partners/partnerships who will develop and test training methods and materials. An evaluation provider will also be appointed.

We are currently developing specifications for the trials and evaluation and intend to publish an invitation to tender soon.

Read the full briefing here to find out more.

Express your interest

If you are interested in participating, please submit your expressions of interest via the Supplying to the NHS Portal www.supplying2nhs.org no later than 18.00 on Friday 14 February 2020.  It is not essential to register an interest, but it ensures you will be notified when the tender is published.

Got a question? 

Skills for Care is coordinating all enquiries about the trials on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care, and Health Education England. If you have a question, please email us. 

Please note that we might not be able to answer your question immediately and will aim to respond in 4-6 working days.

You can also sign up to receive our fortnightly enews to keep up-to-date with the latest opportunities to get involved.