Care Academy Blog

Friday, December 03, 2010

Care Academy is pleased to announce that we are currently developing the UK's first fully online City & Guilds accredited Dementia Qualification which will be available from January 2011.

The Level 2 Award in Awareness in Dementia Care is made up of 4 mandatory units:

1. Dementia awareness
2. The person centred approach to the care and support of individuals with dementia
3. Understand the factors that can influence communication and interaction with individuals who have dementia
4. Understand equality, diversity and inclusion in dementia care.

Notably, the Level 2 Award will count as 8 credits towards the new Health and Social Care Level 2 Diploma (the NVQ replacement) forming a key component of the new Dementia Pathway.

Currently 700,000 people in the UK have dementia and this figure is expected to double over the next few decades.

The qualification in awareness of dementia is aimed at occupational areas across all service user groups and ages, working in statutory (including NHS), private and voluntary agencies. This also includes healthcare/care assistants, support/key workers, family support workers and team leaders/first line supervisors.

Additionally, it's been confirmed that the Dementia Award will be eligible for TSI funding until 2011 at a rate of £80.00 per unit (That's £320.00 in total!) - so it's advisable to get your registrations in early!

To discuss how Care Academy can help your organisation please contact us on 0161 228 1712 or via our online form form.

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, August 04, 2008

The European Care Certificate (ECC), financed by the European Commission’s Leonardo Da Vinci fund, is a pilot project aiming to tackle the increasing number of unqualified carers working within the sector.

Running across Europe until September 2008, the Certificate, formally known as the European Care Licence (ECL), aims to create a common entry level standard for care workers throughout Europe.

Here at Care Academy we’re keeping a close eye on the development of the ECC pilot and our products will be fully updated to incorporate the results. So watch this space!

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

One of the questions I am always asked is how does Care-Academy content map across to NVQ’s.  Well Edgeworks recently tasked an External Verifier for OCR to review our content for this very purpose.

The results made very interesting reading – we found that our Adult Services Induction programme is comprehensive – there were no elements found to be light in content.  Far from it, many covered not only the basic Induction needs but went further – for example, meeting the guidance in the various Skills for Care Knowledge Sets.

We've always known that we had a quality service, but it is certainly good to have that verified!

This mapping forms the basis for our new NVQ Portfolio Builder technology.

If you are interested in how Care-Academy content links into NVQ’s please contact me.