Quality Assured Care Learning Service

Discover how the Quality Assured Care Learning service ensures accessible, high-quality training that meets the needs of the workforce and those who rely on care and support.

Applications are now open and will close at 17:00 on Friday 10 January 2025.

This new service from the Department for Health and Social Care will review the quality of individual courses and qualifications delivered by training providers to ensure that training and development is of good quality, easily accessible, meets the needs of the workforce and users of care services.

The Government is fully committed to a professional, well supported social care workforce, and are committed to enhancing skills for staff working in social care. It is of critical importance that the learning, development and training is of outstanding quality, relevant and accessible.   

Care providers currently have to replace almost a third of their workers each year due to staff leaving their jobs. High turnover worsens the quality of care. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is therefore investing in retention through better workforce training, recognition, and career progression, and has:   

• Published a new career structure for care workers  
• Created a new qualification, the Level 2 Adult Social Care Certificate.  
• Launched the Learning and Development Support Scheme for the adult social care workforce.  
• This programme of reform centres on identifying, providing, and funding better training and development for the workforce.  

Courses and qualifications phases

Over time, it is the government’s ambition that all training and development identified or funded through the Learning and Development Support Scheme for the adult social care workforce will be quality assured by the Quality Assured Care Learning Service. We recognise that this represents a significant change for the sector and will take time to achieve, therefore quality assurance of training provider’s courses and qualifications will occur in phases.

Benefits

Successfully meeting the Quality Standards will result in specific courses and qualifications being: 

• provided with a Quality Assured Care Learning logo that can be used in promotion materials for the course or qualification 
• recommended to DHSC for inclusion in the list of Eligible training courses and qualifications included in Learning and Development Support Scheme for the adult social care workforce. 
• linked to relevant role categories and learning outcomes in the Care Workforce Pathway as suggested learning  
• included in a publicly available list of quality assured courses and qualifications intended to direct adult social care employers and commissioners of learning towards organisations offering high quality learning and development opportunities.   

The Quality Standards

The Quality Standards developed are a bespoke measure of quality learning and development for the adult social care workforce. They are designed to set a benchmark for quality training delivery and support employers to make informed choices. 

To achieve the Quality Assured Care learning Standards, training providers will have to provide evidence which meets the Quality Standards designed for all training providers delivering to the adult social care sector, as well as providing evidence for the Quality Standards related to specific accredited qualification(s) and/or learning programmes and/or the Quality Framework for Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism. 

The Quality Assured Care Learning Service is funded by DHSC so there is no cost to training providers to access the service. The service will be open to all training providers who meet the eligibility criteria published prior to set application windows.  

Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism 

From 1 July 2022, the Health and Care Act 2022 introduced a requirement on CQC-registered providers to ensure their staff receive training on learning disability and autism, appropriate to their role. This training is an important way to ensure staff have the right knowledge and skills to provide safe and compassionate care for people with a learning disability and autistic people and to improve outcomes for this population. We want this training to be an essential part of the learning journey for the adult social care workforce which is why we have embedded it within our plans for workforce reform. Oliver’s Training is the recommended package to meet the legal requirement and the focus of this service. 

To achieve the Quality Framework training providers who deliver the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism (‘Oliver’s Training’) will need to be able to meet the requirements of the Quality Framework. This includes: 

• a commitment to ensuring fair and transparent pricing
• a commitment to ensuring their training offer is in line with the Oliver McGowan draft Code of Practice on statutory learning disability and autism training, and the final Code of Practice when this is issued
• being able to meet or exceed the 9 Quality Standards designed for all training providers delivering to the adult social care sector
• being able to meet or exceed the 3 additional Quality Measures which relate specifically to Oliver’s Training. 

Oliver’s Training 

The Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism is not currently aligned to the LDSS and becoming quality assured through the QACL Service is not a route to funding.  

The purpose of Quality Assuring Oliver’s training is to ensure that there is a list of quality assured training providers who can demonstrate they can deliver Oliver’s Training to the ASC workforce against a bespoke framework. This will contribute towards supporting employers to make informed decisions when commissioning Oliver’s Training, improving the quality of training offered and access to and uptake of training within the ASC sector.

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