Care Academy Blog

Care Academy is currently developing an online 'Skills for Life' audit tool created specifically for the care sector. Although the governments latest Skills for Life progress report indicates that the Department for Innovation, Universities and the Learning and Skills Council are exceeding targets for improving basic literacy and numeracy, many care organisations in particular are still struggling to make significant headway due to the low skill profiles of much of the workforce.

Care Academy Skills for Life audit tool, will provide all organisations with an excellent starting point with which to assess their workforce against the National Standards in Literacy and Numeracy. The outcome from this innovative diagnostic tool can then be used as the foundation from which to build a truly accurate workforce development programme.

Key Features include:

• Users logon to the system and work through a series of short literacy and numeracy assessments designed in line with National Standards.
• Questions are randomly selected from a databank, ensuring users are not presented with the same question format.
• All assessment questions are taken from 'real-life' care worker environments.
• Assessment scores are stored within the system and will automatically indicate the users level against the national standards.
• A variety of key reports can be generated by senior personnel for further analysis.

To find out more about Care Academy Skills for Life Audit Tool please contact us on 0161 228 1712 or via the online form.

After many months working 'under the bonnet' our technology team has finally delivered our all new Policy-Safe solution.

Policy-Safe is a market leading end to end policy management and compliance solution. If you need to ensure key policies and procedures are delivered, read, understood and acted upon, then Policy-Safe is a must have product.

The new updated version now includes an enhanced administration interface to help managers easily upload, manage, distribute, assess and track key policies and procedures.

From a users perspective, individuals are now presented with a clean, user friendly policy document which they can read, answer key assessment questions and both acknowledge receipt and acceptance.

Policy-Safe can be used in any environment where policy management is required, with typical applications covering:

1. Recruitment
2. Employment Contracts
3. Induction
4. Health and Safety
5. Quality Assurance
6. Training

Policy-Safe has been designed to provide complete peace of mind to senior managers who have responsibility for ensuring compliance with organisational policies and procedures.

To find out more about Policy-Safe please contact us on 0161 228 1712 or via our online form.

Keeping up to date with regulatory and compliance training is never easy let alone cheap!

The cost of traditional classroom based training is often compounded by fairly high levels of staff turnover, resulting in significant recurring cost's such as trainers, classrooms, travel and resources.

Even before the economy slipped into recession, many organisations were looking for ways to ensure maximum value from their training budgets, whilst ensuring compliance with CSCI (Commission for Social Care Inspection) audits.

After talking with some of our clients, we identified two common problems;

1. Difficulty in forecasting exact number of staff requiring training, especially across multiple sectors such as older people, children and learning disability services.
2. Investing in staff development only to see key personnel move on soon afterwards.

In order to address these key issues, Care Academy has taken the bold step of introducing two new pricing models.

Learning Pathway 1 - Induction

Under this innovative pricing model, customers can purchase access to all Care Academy Induction programmes under a single licence fee. Once agreed, clients are then free to 'mix and match' employees to the appropriate training programme. This concept provides customers with maximum flexibility and the opportunity to respond to the changing needs of the organisation without incurring further cost.

Current induction programmes available within Learning Pathways include:Common Induction Standards (CIS), Childrens Workforce Development Council (CWDC), Learning Disability Qualification - Induction Award (LDQ-IA) to name but a few.

Learn Now - Certify Later

From April 2009 we are offering Learning Disability Qualification - Induction Award customers the opportunity to split both the learning content and certification. This means you can register staff on a dedicated LDQ-IA learning programme without registering (and paying) for the full certified qualification.

This provides a number of benefits including:

1. Clients can demonstrate to CSCI and other regulatory bodies a commitment to providing appropriate regulatory training.
2. Clients can choose to pay for the full certifcation at a later date when they are confident of the candidate suitability and commitment.

This is great news for learning disability services in particular, who can now take a significant step towards meeting their regulatory training requirements without incurring significant upfront expense.

To find out more about these offers please contact us on 0161 228 1712 or via the online form

Care Academy would like to extend a warm welcome to our latest clients The Priory Group, Care UK, Circle Anglia and Lancashire Workforce Development Partnership who are all currently piloting the UK's first and only accredited online Learning Disability Qualifcation - Induction Award programme.

As a fully online programme, both the delivery of learning content and assessment is delivered via our unique Care Academy Learning Management System, which means no lost paperwork and every user's details are instantly available and fully trackable!

We wish all our new clients every success with their pilots and look forward to rolling out even more courses and programmes with them in the near future.

To help new customers understand how our online Learning Disability Qualification actually works, including the submission and marking of assignments online, we have created a short presentation which is available as either a PowerPoint or PDF document. If you would like to receive a copy of the presentation please contact us on 0161 228 1712 or via our online form.

Care Academy is currently running a pilot programme with Lancashire Workforce Development Partnership to provide funded places to qualifying members on our unique Learning Disability Qualification - Induction Award (LDQ-IA) programme. As a fully accredited City and Guilds centre, Care Academy is able to offer the UK's only fully online LDQ-IA.

Following the successful launch of the pilot, we still have a very small number of funded places available, so please get in touch if you wish to discuss this offer.

We are also in discussion with many similar funding partners throughout the UK, so please contact us to register your interest and we will keep you up to date as funding opportunities become available.

Despite the fact that Training Strategy Implementation (TSI) funding has been available for some time, here at Care Academy we are still surprised that some organisations are still missing out on claiming around £75 per completed induction!

Whilst the reasons may well be many and varied, a common problem appears to be that often the responsibility for processing the claim is not centralised, rather it is the responsibility of managers and staff to complete and process the necessary paperwork. Hardly surprising then that this is often overlooked and vital funding is not claimed!

In order to address this problem, Care Academy has recently introduced an automated TSI funding feature within our system. This ensures that TSI forms are generated automatically upon completion of the induction and signed 'electronically' by the individual. This not only reduces the burden of administration but also ensures no missed funding opportunities. In fact, we recently demonstrated to one client that by using our system to centralise and claim all the funds they were entitled to the system would pay for itself within the first year and provide additional funds to support other training activities!

Our system has been approved by Skills for Care and should provide a welcome relief to over - worked staff.

To find out more about our TSI funding technology please contact us on 0161 228 1712 or via the online form.