Skills for Care

The Training Organisation for Personal Social Services England (TOPSS) was renamed Skills for Care in April 2005. It is the older sibling of all the new bodies created under the modernisation programme in social care. It is employer-led and includes not only England’s 150 social services departments but also the 25,000 voluntary and private sector employers. It was formerly charged with responsibility for education and training in the social care sector as a whole but will now concentrate on adult care, as the Children’s Workforce Development Council (qv) has been established to take on the children’s workforce strategy. (Social work training is the responsibility of the General Social Care Council qv).

Skills for Care and the CWDC will work together as part of England’s Skills for care and Development, the aspiring Sector Skills Council.

While employers implement social care work, decide day-to-day priorities and the supply of trained and qualified staff must meet their requirements, employers’ views are complemented by membership of professional associations, training providers and unions.

Chief executive: Andrea Rowe
Chair: David Croisdale-Appleby
Address: 4th Floor, Albion Court, Albion Place, Leeds LS1 6JP
Telephone: 0113 245 1716
Website: www.skillsforcare.org.uk/
Other UK equivalents: Analogous bodies exist in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.