We work with care organisations, people who need care and support and carers, and other partners to make sure our activities reflect their needs.
Whether you are part of a large care provider, a new business expanding into social care or a person who directly employs a personal assistant, there are many opportunities where you can contribute to our on-going work.
You can get involved by taking part in research, responding to consultations, providing case study examples, commenting on draft products, co-producing new policies or agreeing to be a study site.
All our consultations and research projects are promoted in our fortnightly enewsletter. Sign up to our mailing list so you don’t miss out on new opportunities.
Survey: scoping the adult social care workforce supporting people with a learning disability
We’re exploring the current adult social care workforce that supports people with a learning disability. We want to know what learning and development staff do, at what levels, and what challenges employers face in upskilling their staff.
To help us do this, we want staff, managers including individual employers, team leaders and learning and development leads, who work in services that support people with a learning disability, to complete this short survey.
Access the survey here.
This survey is part of a wider piece of research that Skills for Care and the National Development Team for Inclusion are doing for the Department, to help identify options for future work.
The survey should take 15 minutes to complete and will close on Friday 08 March 2019.
If you’d like us to send you a paper copy of the survey, or if you have any questions, please email Liz Burtney (Skills for Care).
We also want to speak to registered managers in a short telephone interview. If you’re interested, please email Liz Burtney by Friday 08 March 2019.
Learning disability and autism training for health and care staff
The government wants to know how they can make sure that health and social care staff have the right training to understand the needs of people with a learning disability and/or autistic people.
We're supporting their consultation which considers issues around the training and development that staff need to better support people with a learning disability and/or autistic people.
Read more about the consultation and feedback online here.
The consultation will ask what people think about their proposals on:
- the planned content of training
- how the training should be delivered
- how to involve people with a learning disability and/or autistic people in training
- how to mandate, monitor and evaluate the impact of training.
They want to hear from people with a learning disability and/or autistic people, families and carers, patient groups and health and social care providers.
The consultation closes on Friday 12 April 2019.
Review of the 'Learning Disabilities Core Skills Education and Training Framework'
Skills for Care is supporting Skills for Health, Health Education England and NHS England to review and refresh the 'Learning Disabilities Core Skills Education and Training Framework' (which was written in 2015-16).
The refresh will take into account the findings from the 'Learning Disabilities Mortality Review', which found that there are some health problems that people with a learning disability might get more than other people, or that health services aren’t good at finding and treating. The framework will ensure staff have the skills and knowledge to do something about this.
We want lots of people to tell us what they think about the framework, including people who use services, work in services, run services and/or train people.
You can download the draft framework and send your comments and feedback by completing an online survey, here on the Skills for Health website. The survey closes on Monday 25 February 2019.
Review: working with families framework
People’s families play a vital role in adult social care services. Employers and staff need to be better at working with people’s families at all levels.
We’ve worked with the Avenues Group to develop a framework that outlines what staff need to know and do to work well with people’s families, and we want to know what you think.
We’d like to hear from as many people as possible, including managers, learning and development leads, front line staff, assessors, people who need care and support and families.
Please download the framework and complete the survey from here, by Monday 01 April 2019.
The consultation on the adult social care workforce (Facing the Facts, Shaping the Future) run by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and supported by Skills for Care has now ended. Thank you for taking part. The consultation sought views and evidence on actions that could be taken to address challenges relating to recruitment, retention, workforce development, regulation and workforce planning in adult social care. In total, over 550 individuals and organisations were involved in the consultation process through both online feedback and workshops.
The findings of the consultation are being used to inform the forthcoming health and care workforce strategy and Green Paper on care and support for older people and will be published alongside them. This is now expected later this year although exact timing has not been confirmed.