Social care charities should be compensated for the costs of training staff to meet standards demanded by the Scottish executive and regulators, delegates heard.
Romy Langeland, chief executive of Aberlour Child Care Trust, said councils commissioning services from charities should meet the costs of staff training within contracts.
She said that if the Scottish executive wanted voluntary organisations to deliver the same standards as the public sector, there was a clear implication that staff would need more training.
But Chris Warhurst, director of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research at Strathclyde University, questioned whether the Scottish executive or councils should pick up charities' training costs.
"The voluntary sector is being paid to deliver services, not to develop the capacity to deliver services," he said.
