How the Quality Assured Care Learning Service is supporting quality learning in social care

Louise Hunt, Quality Assurance Lead, Skills for Care, discusses more about what the Quality Assured Care Learning Service is and how it’s helping to ensure high quality training for the social care sector.

When the Quality Assured Care Learning Service (QACLS) was launched in October 2024, the aim was clear: to create a straightforward, consistent way to ensure the quality of Government-funded training in adult social care.

It provides confidence to organisations undertaking training and to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) that the training programmes being funded through the Learning Development Support Scheme (LDSS) are of high-quality, easily accessible and meets the needs of the adult social care workforce and those who use care services. It also makes it much easier for learners and employers to find training from providers they can trust.

At its core, the service quality assures training providers, courses and qualifications. Any provider who delivers training that’s funded through the LDSS can apply to be quality assured. The application process is fully-funded, which means there’s no financial barrier beyond the training provider’s own time and effort. This was intentional, so the system remains accessible, fair and genuinely focused on improving standards rather than creating hurdles.

When a provider applies, they work through a set of nine quality standards. These cover areas such as organisational values, internal quality assurance, how they support and develop staff, how they gather and use learner and customer feedback, and their equality, diversity and inclusion practices. These standards give us a detailed picture of how the organisation operates and whether it can deliver training that meets the needs of the sector.

For providers delivering accredited qualifications, there’s an additional stage where they show they meet the requirements specific to those qualifications. And for those delivering the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on learning disability and autism, there’s a dedicated part of the process based on a bespoke quality framework.

So far, we’ve quality assured 80 providers, and one of the unexpected but welcome outcomes has been engaging with organisations we hadn’t worked with before. Some of these providers have become very active partners, offering insight into what’s happening across the learning and development world and helping us understand how the sector is evolving. It’s also been encouraging to see that even though we don’t deliver formal quality improvement support, the standards themselves are prompting some organisations to raise their expectations and use them as a baseline for best practice.

Another positive development is the increasing recognition of the service among care providers. We’ve had training providers tell us that the care organisations who use their training services are now asking whether they’ve been quality assured, and some even applied because care providers encouraged them to do so. Although the service is still relatively new, it’s gaining momentum and becoming viewed as a meaningful mark of quality. This is especially important as we move toward the longterm ambition for quality assurance to be directly linked to LDSS funding, which will strengthen consistency and expectations across the sector.

As mentioned, there is a bespoke quality framework to support the Oliver McGowan training. This was co-developed in May 2024 with autistic people and people with a learning disability. Their involvement shaped the framework in a very real way. Values were a strong and consistent theme. For them, it wasn’t enough for an organisation to simply deliver the training—they wanted to be sure providers were doing it for the right reasons and applying the right principles throughout their work. That message was so strong that we incorporated values into the main quality standards that all providers must meet.

The working group also highlighted three areas that became the quality measures specific to Oliver’s training: the employment and support of cotrainers with lived experience; the organisation’s experience of working alongside autistic people or people with a learning disability, and the ability to deliver the training in a way that is genuinely relevant to the audience. These weren’t abstract ideas; they came directly from people who understand what good support looks like in practice. Their priorities form the backbone of how we assess organisations delivering this training.

It’s important to say that while we don’t assess the content of the Oliver McGowan training—that’s not our role—we do look closely at who is delivering it and how. We focus on the values, the experience, the approach and the conditions for delivery. These things have a huge impact on the quality and integrity of the training, especially something as significant and widely required as Oliver’s training.

Throughout all of this, one thing we remain committed to is keeping the process supportive. Applying for quality assurance shouldn’t feel daunting, and we encourage providers to get in touch with us at any stage if they have questions or want to talk things through. We regularly hold onetoone conversations and are always happy to help providers understand what’s expected and how they can best demonstrate their commitment to quality. Ultimately, we want a wide and diverse list of organisations delivering highquality training so that the social care workforce has access to the development opportunities it needs.

The Quality Assured Care Learning Service is still growing, but it’s already making a difference—both in the number of providers engaging with it and in the way people are talking about quality in adult social care training. And as more organisations come on board, that impact will continue to build, helping create a stronger, more confident and better supported workforce.

Find out more about the Quality Assured Care Learning Service.

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