Benefits of accreditation
Regardless of your sector, there are many different accreditation schemes available. Some people automatically reach for accreditation services, whereas others seek to go it alone. But what are the actual benefits of getting yourself accredited?
1. Confidence to regulators and external bodies
Every sector has regulators, although some are more involved and prescriptive than others. As much as you want to work with those regulators, you want to give them as much confidence as possible in what you do so that you can get on with delivering your products and services. In the health and social care sector, that means giving the Care Quality Commission (CQC) confidence in your ability to provide adequate care and to train your staff with the skills they need.
2. Confidence to customers and service users
Social media and review websites have made the public more mistrustful and cynical about the claims made by organisations. Accreditation protects against this by showing that, unlike others, you take your obligations to them seriously. For supermarkets, using accreditations such as the Red Tractor on their products shows that they take their advertised commitments to British farmers and British produce seriously. For training organisations, getting your courses accredited is testament to the fact that you place great stock in accuracy and training quality.
3. Confidence to employees
Employees, particularly Millennials and those of Generation Z, are becoming much more discriminating when choosing for whom they work. Talented employees now want employers who have a core purpose, have ethical practices, and offer good working conditions. Gaining accreditation proves to them that you are out to swindle anyone but provide a substantial service or product. There are accreditation schemes specifically designed to prove to prospective employees that you care for the people who work for you, such as Investors in People.
4. Help and support
Many accreditation or awarding bodies also offer support and guidance. The Federation of Master Builders offers members a suite of legal forms and a free helpline. Others may offer knowledge updates or seminars.
Above all, accreditation is about reassurance for yourself and for others.
What about you?
Are you a care organisation or a training provider? Find out about the benefits of getting your training accredited.
What you need to complete the Care Certificate
The Care Certificate was launched in April 2015. At the time and since, it has been subject to many myths and misconceptions. What is the Care Certificate? What do your staff need to do to be able to complete it?
What is the Care Certificate?
The Care Certificate is a set of 15 standards that care workers should follow in order to do their job successfully and provide a good level of care. It was developed together by Health Education England, Skills for Care and Skills for Health and based on the requirements of the Cavendish Review. It replaced the Common Induction Standards and National Minimum Training Standards, its direct precursors.
The Care Certificate is fairly similar to the Common Induction Standards in a number of ways, but included new standards that recognised the modern challenges in the health and social care sector, such as mental health issues and dementia (Standard 9), safeguarding (Standards 10 and 11) and information privacy and governance (Standard 14).
Who need to do the Care Certificate?
Any new health and social care workers from April 2015 were required to ‘do’ the Care Certificate. If you use agency, bank or temporary staff, it is up to you to determine whether they have training suitable to perform their role.
If you have hired someone who claims they have undertaken training in the standards with a previous employer, then you should still take steps to verify their claims and assess their competence in the workplace.
Is it mandatory?
Technically, the Care Certificate is not mandatory. Although it was widely expected pre-April 2015 that this would be the case, Skills for Care confirmed in 2015 that the Care Certificate had no statutory power behind it.
In their own words, however, “the Care Quality Commission will expect that appropriate staff who are new to services which they regulate will achieve the competences required by the Care Certificate as part of their induction”.
In practice, this means that the Care Certificate is effectively mandatory, or at the very least expected best practice for care providers. The CQC actively look for evidence that:
- The Care Certificate forms part of the staff induction process, or if not, a suitable alternative is used;
- Staff know the standards and that they have been trained in them and assessment against them;
- The provider is actively assessing against the competencies in the Care Certificate.
The CQC use the Care Certificate as a baseline because that is precisely what it was intended to be, to apply to both regulated and non-regulated workforces. Assessing against the Care Certificate help ensure a minimum standard of care for everyone.
Is there a time limit?
Another myth perpetuated at the time of launch was that Certificate had to be completed within 12 weeks of induction. This belief actually originated from Skills for Care’s own pilot project that showed that 12 weeks was the approximate time it would take someone to demonstrate the competencies and knowledge. Again, technically, there is no time-limit. All the CQC need to see is that it forms part of the “induction process”.
What do staff need to do to complete the Care Certificate?
‘Completing’ the Care Certificate is not as easy as sending staff on a training course. That is because it requires a joint-effort on behalf of both the care worker and the employer. Care workers must demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the Care Certificate, but the employer must assess this is their everyday work.
Many providers use a combination of methods to help new staff understand the Care Certificate. Classroom-based training, distance learning or e-learning can help with many of the more theory-based standards, although distance learning or e-learning alone is likely to be insufficient for Standard 12: Basic Life Support. The assessor should then look for examples in their everyday work that they are actively applying the standards, or, if such situations do not present themselves, create scenarios to help them demonstrate their knowledge and skills.
What resources are there to help?
Skills for Care and Skills for Health have produced a number of free resources, including guidance on all standard, a self-assessment tool, and free e-learning.
Advantage have also developed a distance learning package designed to meet the needs of both staff and employers, including assessment sheets and easy-to-follow knowledge guides. Get in touch to find out more.
What does accreditation mean?
New research on vascular dementia
The Alzheimer’s Society has produced a spotlight on ongoing research into vascular dementia, the second most common form of dementia.
The spotlight highlights a number of ongoing projects working to understand how to prevent the disease taking hold. One such project, led by the University of Oxford, is testing to see whether surgical procedures undertaken to prevent the risk of a stroke has had a noticeable impact on the cases of vascular dementia in the test group.
Other research is delving deeper into causes of vascular dementia. One particularly interesting piece of work by Professor Roxana Carare of Southampton University is investigating as to whether conditions that drain fluid from the brain make vascular dementia more likely.
You can read up on all of these projects by clicking here.
Not long left for Skills for Care managers’ survey
Skills for Care’s Managers and Nominated Persons survey ends tomorrow. The objective is to find out what the daily life and tasks of a care manager or nominated person consists of, so that Skills for Care can make recommendations for improvements.
The survey is in part triggered by a lack of knowledge, but also by a growing awareness of the high staff turnover among this class of care employees:
For registered managers the turnover and vacancy rates associated with the role are 23% and 11% respectively, and we expect that as many as 10,000 registered managers may retire in the next 15 years. For nominated individuals, the CQCs plans to look more closely at strategic leadership as part of inspection may have an impact on that role.
You can find a link to the survey by clicking here.
Care home opens its doors to toddlers
A care home in London has become the first intergenerational facility in Britain by opening a nursery in its building. The move is expected to lead to both economic benefits for the care facility, and welfare benefits for the elderly residents.
The facility is an example of an innovative, intergenerational solution to Britain’s care ghettoisation that we described in our Future of Care Report. On a similar theme, the first mixed student and elderly residential development is expected soon.
Read more about it by clicking here.
Your work experience checklist
If you’re a residential or domiciliary care organisation taking someone in on work experience, there’s a big benefit to yourself and the sector as a whole. Hopefully, you’re getting someone who’s enthusiastic who may even end up working for you someday and making a real difference. However, it’s easy to forget the basics when it comes to work experience, so here’s your checklist to make sure you and the person get the most out of their work experience.
1. Get the right person
Normally, if someone is applying for work experience in your care setting then it’s because they want to be there, but not always. Find some way of vetting the person beforehand to make sure you’re getting someone who will put the effort in. There’s nothing worse in any work environment than someone who doesn’t want to be there.
2. Basic housekeeping
Make sure you give the work experience person everything they need to know on the first day. That means all the things you take for granted, such as expected working hours, where the toilets are, who to ask for help, how long the lunch break is, and where the first aid kit is located.
3. Don’t mistake anxiety for laziness
Most of the people you get on work experience will be young, and teenagers are complex creatures! Sometimes they may be giving off an attitude that can easily come across as sulkiness or laziness. Make sure, however, you prod a little deeper, because it could just be anxiety. Remember, it is likely to be there first experience of working life and outside of the comfort zone of the controlled classroom environment.
4. Ease them in
As stated above, this may be their first experience of working life, so don’t throw them in at the deep end. Make sure they get a full induction and tour, and maybe try them out on a few easier tasks before moving them on to more intense activities.
5. Give them a rounded experience
We all know that a care organisation is not just the front-line. There’s also the business management, finance and coordination sides, as well as others. Give the work experience person a full picture of your organisation and all of its aspects. If the person isn’t quite enjoying one aspect of the organisation, you can move them to another where they might thrive.
6. Give them a supervisor who will make time for them
The front-line of care can be hectic. It’s hard enough for your supervisors and managers to give time to full-time staff, let alone work experience people. Of course, we know that it is important that they do. Choosing the right supervisor for the work experience person can be crucial, so have a think about someone with the right personality traits and who has the time to dedicate to helping someone through the whole experience. You may even want to consider lightening their other duties for a period to ensure they have enough time for the person.
Do you have any other tips? Leave your comments below!
More than funding needed to change social care
Readers will be well advised to read a very interesting and provocative article in The Spectator on the need for reform in the social care system, concluding the system needs much more than just fresh cash.
The article, by James Mumford, who led a review of social care for the Centre for Social Justice, argues that funding is not the only answer for social care. Especially since, as implied in the last general election campaign, many seem unwilling to countenance a change in funding in order to fund those in need.
As Mumford points out, though, as we have consistently said on this blog, that lack of funding is not the only issue with our care system: “It is not a funding issue when a resident isn’t given a glass of water. It is not a funding issue when people in charge fail to deliver. And it is also not a funding issue that we, so often, look the other way or quite simply stay away.”
Mumford points out that when people are moved into a care environment, they are typically cut off from their possessions and their social connections, and are seldom given the opportunities to develop new ones. As a result, their mental well-being deteriorates along with their physical health. Mumford references a recent social experiment broadcast on television where children entered a care home and caused an increase in the physical health of residents, evoking a similar scheme in the US.
Mumford also echoes Advantage’s calls for us to think bigger and in a more imaginative way, citing the proposal from a New York doctor for smaller but more homely facilities for the elderly. Above all, he stresses the need to end the “marginalisation” of the elderly. There are no shortage of ideas to help with this. One idea mentioned in our Future of Care report called for housing schemes to be designed around the young and the elderly.
Increasingly, the mood seems to be that funding is not the only answer for care. Instead, we need radical and progressive thinking that recognises the need for a change of culture and mindset.
CQC report finds good care in mental health services
Although the media will no doubt focus on the negatives, a new CQC report on the state of care in mental health services has actually uncovered a lot of good news.
A study of mental health services conducted between 2014 and 2017 has found that 68% of core services provided by the NHS are good and 6% outstanding, while the ratio is 72% and 4% respectively for independent services. Among those services for which special praise were delivered were community services for those with learning disabilities or autism. Even providers labelled as requiring improvement have made “real progress”.
Unfortunately, the report also highlights a “substantial minority” of services where improvement is needed, and cited a number of familiar areas of concern, including staffing shortages, locked rehabilitation wards, poor quality clinical information systems, and the variation in the use of physical restraint and restrictive practices.
The latter is certainly a hot topic in the sector today, and the reason behind Skills for Care’s recent push on positive behaviour support. Clearly, services needed to embed the latest guidance in their training programmes more deeply to achieve change.
The full report and data is available on the CQC website.
Many pessimistic about the future of care
The results of an Advantage survey for a new report on the Future of Care show that many in the care sector are pessimistic about the future of the sector and the quality of care.
The survey asked respondents to rate their optimism about the future of the sector out of 10, with 10 being very optimistic, and 0 being very pessimistic. The average rating was just 3. Of those that delivered very low ratings, the main reason stated was a fear of demand outstripping supply and funding. Only 13% of respondents gave a rating of 6 or above.
A majority also felt the quality of care would suffer in the foreseeable future. Of those that answered ‘Other’, the general feeling was of stagnation.
Why did our survey respondents feel so negatively? What can we do to help our social care system prosper? Download our new report on the Future of Care to find out.
