The Care Certificate

The Care Certificate has now replaced both the Common Induction Standards in adult social care and the National Minimum Training Standards in healthcare.

Due to the previous inconsistencies in training and competencies of the health and social care workforce, the Cavendish Review 2013 proposed that all healthcare assistants and social care support workers must achieve a standard ‘certificate of fundamental care’ before they can provide care to people unsupervised.

Skills for Care, Skills for Health and Health Education England have developed the Care Certificate which is made up of 15 standards covering the key competences, values and behaviours essential for providing high quality compassionate care.

It is the responsibility of the employer to ensure that all new staff members complete the Care Certificate during their induction process.   

If you employ Health Care Assistants, Assistant Practitioners, Care Support Workers or those giving support to clinical roles in the NHS where there is any direct contact with patients, Embrace-learning can provide you with the training material to ensure that your training needs are met and you are fully prepared for these upcoming changes.

The introduction of the Care Certificate should hopefully bring an improvement to care standards over the coming months.  Any concerns over the fact that the Care Certificate is not accredited are outweighed by the flexibility that care providers and managers now have in delivering their staff induction training in a way that best suits their particular requirements. Many providers are choosing to incorporate e-learning into their Care Certificate training as it means that staff can learn at a time, pace and place that suits them.

We have created a blended learning solution for rolling out the Care Certificate.  Our e-learning course, produced in line with the Skills for Care Specification, contains individual workbooks alongside each of the 15 e-learning units.  The workbooks can be downloaded as a PDF or completed online. In addition there is an end of course on line assessment that tests the learner’s knowledge based on the course content. The manager or assessor has the responsibility of ensuring that the learner has a thorough understanding of the unit and has demonstrated their competence before they can be signed off. This allows for evidence of best practice to be gathered and underpinning knowledge to be acquired by the learner.

If you would like some more information about our Care Certificate course or our other health and social care courses please give us a call on 0161 928 9987.  We offer free advice and can talk you through the most suitable and cost-effective solutions to meet your specific requirements.

For information about our Care Certificate e-learning course, as well as access to a free trial, please follow the link here.

More information and resources are available from the Skills for Care website.