Care Academy Blog

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

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

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Here at Care Academy we are always looking for ways to improve the range of products and services avaialable to clients and as 2008 draws to a close here is a sneak preview of some of the exciting developments in the pipeline for 2009:

• Skills for Life audit tool to assist organisations with the assessment of numeracy and literacy skills. The audit tool is being created with a specific focus on care sector questions and scenarios and will form the basis for our 'learning pathway' concept, taking learners from induction through to NVQ and beyond.
• A range of on-line and tutor led numeracy and literacy programmes to support the delivery of Skills for Life programmes.
• Integrated learning content and e-portfolio solution to streamline the delivery, tracking and attainment of NVQ qualifications. A key feature of the system will be access to on-demand reporting specifically created to meet the requirements for access to funding streams.
• Specialised courses to address key topics including:
  • Dementia
  • Risk Assessment
  • End of Life
  • Administration of Medication
  • Equality and Diversity
  • Managing Challanging Behaviour
  • Lone Working
  • Infection Prevention and Control
  • COSHH
• Housing365 - a dedicated solution created specifically to provide Health and Safety training to Housing Assocaitions.

If you would like to find out more about any of our plans for 2009 please get in touch.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Welcome to Allied Healthcare Group, our latest Care Academy client!

With over 100 branches throughout the UK and more than 11,000 care workers, Allied Healthcare has chosen Care Academy to help them deliver their regulatory and compliance training. Allied Healthcare are currently running a pilot programme through some of their key branches and plan to roll out Care Academy nationally during 2009.

The first programmes to be delivered via Allied Care Academy include Common Induction Standards, Learning Disability Qualification, Children's Workforce Development Council (CWDC) Induction and associated update programmes. 

Following a thorough review of the marketplace, Allied Healthcare chose Care Academy because of the extensive range of learning content combined with real-time, on-demand management information to effectively assess, track and train their workforce, whilst also providing detailed reports to industry regulators. Additionally, through the deployment of Policy-Safe within Care Academy, Allied Healthcare are easily able to create, distribute and monitor key company policy documents such as employment contracts, induction procedures, health and safety, QA and compliance policies.

Here at Care Academy, we are excited about the prospect of working with one of the sectors' leading organisation's to help them improve the delivery of their in-house training programmes. As a key client, Allied Healthcare will have privileged access to the latest technology currently being developed by Care Academy, enabling them to further streamline and improve their regulatory and compliance training programmes.

Friday, November 21, 2008

The Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) has now taken responsibility for the children’s portion of the Increasing Skills in Social Care (TSI) project. The project which was formally known as the Training Strategy Implementation fund and was previously distributed by Skills for Care has had a successful start with £1.9 million already distributed direct to employers in the social care sector.

The new system provides funding directly to private and voluntary independent sector employers via an online registration process. Cash is provided by way of a registration fee and then a further single payment upon achievement of a full NVQ Level 3.

More than 50 organisations have already signed up to the pilot system, and more are due to register soon, with the first payments on 27 October being of more than £260,000.

Projects Co-ordinator for National Programmes at CWDC, said:

"We are very happy with how the pilot system has been received. It was launched on 20 October and 22 organisations signed up and 165 employees, undertaking NVQ3 in Health and Social Care, were registered for funding on the system in the first week alone.

This is a really good opportunity for the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) employers to gain direct access to funds to support employees undertaking NVQ Level 3 in Health and Social Care.

Although we've had a good start and an excellent take up to the pilot so far, we still want more people to sign up."

Monday, September 29, 2008

We are delighted to announce that Care Academy is now an approved City and Guilds assessment centre, offering both level 2 and 3 Learning Disability Qualification Induction Award (LDQ-IA) to all the candidates.

The LDQ Induction Award is the replacement of the Learning Disability Awards Framework (LDAF) and consists of four modules:

Module One: Principles of learning disability

Module Two: Your role as a learning disability worker

Module Three: Health and Safety in a learning disability Service

Module Four: Protecting people who have learning disabilities from abuse

Here at Care Academy we are thrilled to be an approved assessment centre and have chosen to run our programme with City and Guilds due to their wide range of courses, designed by people within industry to help students learn skills relevant to their employment ambitions.

The LDQ has been developed in conjunction with key bodies within care including the Valuing People Support Team (VPST), The Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC), Skills for Health and the 'In Control’ Project'. Their involvement ensures the qualification is relevant, up to date and valued by employers.

Confirming the importance of the LDQ qualification, Skills for Care state:

"Completion of the Induction Award will enable learners to demonstrate that they have met the requirements of the Common Induction Standards in a learning disability context"

Here at the Care Academy we will be registering candidates for both level 2 and 3 of the LDQ. For more information please contact Paul Allman on 0161 228 1712 or visit our website.

Monday, August 11, 2008

First announced in 2006, the Integrated Qualification Framework (IQF) will come into force in October this year. Owned by the Children’s Workforce Network (CWN), the IQF is a set of approved qualifications for people working with children, young people and families. It aims to integrate units and qualifications within the children’s workforce, along with education and training still in development within the new Qualification and Credit Framework (QCF).

The new framework has been developed to encourage progression and continuing professional development across the children’s workforce. It will allow training to be developed, undertaken and ensure that training is transferable to promote greater mobility within the sector.

Here at Care Academy we're watching all IQF and QCF developments and will keep you, and our products, updated.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

CWDC (Children’s Workforce Development Council) has been asked by the Development of Children, Schools and Families to produce ‘a statement of what can be expected of social workers who work with children and families’. This statement will build on the detailed work already carried out by the GSCC (General Social Care Council) on the roles of social workers.

To achieve this CWDC are looking for social workers and managers from local authorities and voluntary organisations employing children’s social workers, and professionals who work alongside children’s social workers, to attend a short focus group to discuss the statement.

For more details see their website for dates and designated groups.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

The Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) recently announced the completion of stage 3 of its Sector Skills Agreement, bringing together research from stages one and two to analyse the gap between demand for skills and the supply of training.

The full report – Delivering the Big Deal – sets out the skills challenges and priorities for the children’s workforce identified during the SSA process and outlines how these will be addressed. Not surprisingly, the priority areas for skills covered in the report include recruitment and retention, workforce skills, qualifications and training, funding for training and development and workforce intelligence.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Our development team have been hard at work this summer (well, with the weather, there was nothing else to do!).  As a result clients will be able to use the CWDC Induction programme from Mid-November.

Monday, July 02, 2007

Care-Academy clients will soon be able to benefit from the following content:

• CWDC Induction
• Origins of Challenging Behaviour (Adults)
• Origins of Challenging Behaviour (Children / Young Adults)
• LDQ Induction Award

To be informed of when this content goes live and receive a demonstration click here.