Skills for Care has launched a suite of online materials to help health and social care employers prepare to assess their staff against the Care Certificate.
The certificate, which will be launched in March, will be awarded to healthcare assistants and care support workers to demonstrate they have completed basic training to enable them to work unsupervised.
It was a key recommendation of the Cavendish review into social care regulation and training, which was commissioned in the wake of the Mid-Staffordshire hospital scandal.
The certificate will ensure workers are assessed against a set of 15 standards to demonstrate they have the skills, knowledge and behaviours required to provide compassionate and high quality care and support. These include safeguarding adults, safeguarding children and awareness of mental health, learning disability and dementia.
It has been developed by Skills for Care, Skills for Health and Health Education England.
The supporting materials published by Skills for Care include:
- The Care Certificate framework, which sets out how assessors should measure staff against the standards;
- A document mapping the certificate against existing standards for care workers, such as the code of conduct for healthcare support workers and adult social care workers;
- A document outlining what the standards consist of;
- A self-assessment tool to test staff against the standards;
- Two frequently asked questions documents for professionals and the general public.
They are intended to help employers become familiar with the new standards, which include dignity, communication and safeguarding, and to assess members of staff completing the qualification.
Sharon Allen, chief executive of Skills for Care, said: “The Care Certificate is a significant step towards greater social care and health integration.
“We now have a fit-for-purpose set of standards which very clearly define the minimum expectations of what is expected of people joining the social care or health sectors.”
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The Certificate definitely does NOT “demonstrate they have completed basic training” as your article suggests.
The whole point of the Care Certificate is that it is about what people into practice, not how many courses they have been on.
Have you read the guidance? Page 5?
Certificates do NOT count as evidence towards the Care Certificate.
http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/skills-for-care-partner-zone/2015/feb/05/care-certificate-health-social-care-culture