We continue to support and expect to see the Care Certificate being used by providers.
This sets standards for the induction of health care support workers and adult social care workers. Now, more than ever, the people who work in these essential roles provide some of the most personal and fundamental care and support. They are a crucial part of the workforce in the services we regulate. They must be valued, supported and trained to do their important job well.
The Care Certificate helps new members of this workforce to develop and demonstrate key skills, knowledge, values and behaviours. This enables them to provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care. A good, thorough and appropriate induction should form the foundation for ongoing learning and development to support a person’s growth and career.
What we expect
CQC continues to expect providers to induct, support and train their staff appropriately. Those who employ health care support workers and adult social care workers should be able to demonstrate that staff have, or are working towards, the skills set out in the Care Certificate. This is the benchmark for staff induction.
See our guidance for providers on how to meet the regulations:
This includes links to Care Certificate resources to help providers implement the standards.
What we expect to see, and how we explore this, remains the same. We look at a provider’s approach to staff induction, support and training using our key lines of enquiry, in particular, ‘Is the service effective?’. When we start to use our new assessment framework, this will continue to be a key area of interest and focus for us. This is particularly under the safe key question’ when we explore the new quality statement on safe and effective staffing.
We will continue to do this in a range of ways:
- speaking to new members of staff
- speaking to managers
- speaking to people who use the service
- observation of practice
- looking at staff records and training plans
- ongoing monitoring of information.
All providers should be able to demonstrate how they are:
- meeting the regulations
- providing a safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led service.
Using nationally recognised good practice, such as the Care Certificate, is a good way to help show this to us.