Health and social care training

New Staff

As a new Support Worker Active Prospects will provide you with the practical support you need whether you are entering social care for the first time or have changed your job and are new to Active Prospects.

The Care Certificate

The Care Certificate was introduced in April 2015. The Care Certificate covers the learning outcomes, competencies and standards of behaviour that must be expected of support workers in the health and social care sectors. It aims to make sure that staff are caring, compassionate and provide quality care. It will help new members develop and demonstrate key skills, knowledge, values and behaviours, enabling them to provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care.

CQC has welcomed the Care Certificate as it sets the standard of induction and helps to ensure staff are providing support in a way that helps raise the standards of care and support.

Induction Period

Active Prospects' two week induction will provide the all the information needed to help you start your Care Certificate. You will be given a work book for the knowledge element of the Care Certificate and your manager will assess your competence. This has to be completed within 12 weeks of starting work.

All Staff

In line with Care Quality Commission regulations, Active Prospects provides regular refresher training for all care and support workers so you can keep your knowledge and skills up to date. 

We constantly work to improve our existing courses and also introduce new ones when this is needed to meet the needs of our services and the people we support. This is based on the training needs that are essential to providing good outcomes for the people using our services, reflecting their particular needs.

This training is also recommended as good practice for our employees who are not involved in direct care.  If you are based at our central office, you will also be offered this together with other training where it is required for your job role.

Examples of new QCF certificated courses offered this year include Level 2 Certificates in Mental Health Awareness, Safe Handling of Medicines, Equality and Diversity, Mental Health Awareness, Dementia and End of Life Care. 

Other new training courses include:

• Human Rights and Learning Disability
• Communicating with adults with profound, multiple learning disabilities
• Stroke awareness
• Diabetes awareness
• Food and nutrition  

Continuing Professional Development

Your Personal Development Plan

There are many ways you can plan your personal development using a variety of learning experiences. These can be formal, by attending an organised training workshop, studying for a formal qualification or being taught to acquire a new skill by your manager or a colleague.

They can also be informal, such as chairing a review meeting, coaching others, covering other’s work when they are on leave, offering to take on a new project, reading a newspaper, journal, even in a discussion – the list is long. 

In order to aid the continuous learning process, you are encouraged to keep a record of your development via personal development plans or continuing professional development record. This way you can plan your development and also log any unplanned learning experiences which you can recall at important times such as at annual appraisal, to aid a job application or to support promotion opportunities.

Completing a Personal Development Plan (PDP)

Your PDP should be regularly updated so it helps you to reflect on what you have achieved over the past year and also plan for the future. Initially think about something new you have learnt or done and how it helped you in your role. Use this to celebrate your achievements and identify ways you can build on these to further develop yourself.

You should agree future goals with your manager to keep yourself updated and prepared for future challenges.