How digital confidence leads to better care and support

As we launch our ‘Building digital confidence’ campaign, Jane Brightman, our Head of Workforce Strategy, discusses why digital confidence is so important for the adult social care workforce and what Skills for Care is doing to support digital skills in the sector.

Digital can be overwhelming, and it can be difficult to even know where to start on your digital journey.

We know technology is a huge part of most people’s everyday lives – and that includes people of all ages. As such, when people are then in a position where they’re drawing on care and support, it’s important to them that they still have access to the same everyday technology they’re used to accessing.

This will become increasingly true moving forward as future generations for whom technology is so embedded in their lives access care and support.

Digital social care records can support managers to analyse data on individuals within seconds, by producing reports and flagging potential deterioration in individuals’ health. When considering how long this would take to achieve from paper records and opening those archive boxes, you can start to see how moving to a digital set up can really make a difference.

Employers must start this journey now for their businesses to survive and adapt to future needs. By breaking it down into manageable segments, implementing technology and software can be achieved by any adult social care employer, of any size.

One example I know of is of a young individual who has a learning disability. They live at a supported living site and have a games console in their room. Their support worker is able to switch the console on and also provides troubleshooting support if something isn’t working properly. The support worker went on holiday and no one else knew how to use the console, so the individual was unable to access this until the support worker returned. As the individual was unable to access the console, they presented with challenging behaviour during this time. This caused the individual a week of unnecessary distress. Following this, all staff at the site have since been trained on using the console.

We all come to work in the adult social care sector because we care about supporting others to be as independent as possible and as we move forward with technology, we have to accept that this will become part of our day-to-day role and appreciate the positive difference this can make to the people who draw on care and support.

How Skills for Care is supporting the sector with digital skills

We still have around 10% of organisations that aren't digitised, meaning they're not using technology. At Skills for Care, we’re working across a wide range of initiatives to support the social care sector with building digital skills and confidence.

A key part of this work is the Digitising Social Care programme (DISC). This is a commitment from the Government to support the adult social care sector with funding to increase digital skills and ways of working – that could include investing in digital social care records or purchasing new technology.

To support this project Skills for Care is running a series of webinars.

• Understanding your digital requirements under the Single Assessment Framework (13 November, 14:00 - 15:00)
• CQC Supporting people to live healthier lives – practical ways to empower people and your teams (12 December, 10:00 – 11:00)

Another key focus is around supporting digital champions. As a registered manager or a nominated individual, you need to have allies within your organisation to support positive progress with digital ways of working, and digital champions can be that ally.

A digital champion will be a role staff members can take on in addition to their everyday role – you can think of it the same as a dignity champion or a dementia champion.

Online self-assessments

Skills for Care has been contracted by the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS Transformation Directorate to develop two online self-assessments to support people and adult social care organisations on their digital learning and development journey.

Digital Skills Framework Self-Assessment

An online self-assessment for the digital skills framework for adult social care is being developed that will be hosted on the Digitising Social Care website.

This online self-assessment will support people working in adult social care to identify areas of learning and personal skills development, and to be steered and signposted to information, training and resources to meet each person’s needs.

What Good Looks Like Self-Assessment

An online self-assessment tool for the digital ‘What Good Looks Like (WGLL) Framework’ is being developed for adult social care organisations and providers, following the existing self-assessment that is currently supporting local authorities.

This online self-assessment will help adult social care providers on their digital journey. It will help them to benchmark and baseline themselves around digital capabilities and improvement; understand their achievements and their gaps of digital focus; develop their digital vision; and to make the case for change.

Both self-assessments will help to support people and providers in embracing and using digital technology in care, and signpost to wider learning and development. They will be stepping stones to information resources, e-learning and training courses across the broad landscape of digital skills.

Both self-assessments are planned to go live at the end of March 2025.

Digital Skills e-Learning Modules

Skills for Care was commissioned by the NHS Transformation Directorate to create a suite of free-to-access ‘bitesize’ eLearning modules in line with the seven themes of the digital skills framework.

The modules were co-developed with the adult social care sector, with contributions from care providers, local authorities, people drawing on care and support and subject matter experts.

These modules can provide a broad base of knowledge around everyday digital skills involved the delivery of care. They’re a great starting point and foundation on a person’s digital learning journey. The modules also offer signposting to wider information and resources and can help support people working in care across a wide range of different roles and responsibilities.

To learn more about the modules and how to access them, please visit our digital skills e-learning page on our website.

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As part of all this work, it’s also really important for us to establish a baseline of what digital roles and digital skills in the adult social care sector look like. We’re using our Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) to help us do this, by adding new options which allow employers to share data about the digital roles and skills in their organisation

This is vital in providing a clear picture of what digital transformation looks like from a workforce perspective in terms of training and roles, which can be used to influence decision-making by the Government and other stakeholders about where investment in digital within the sector is best placed.

Beyond this, a key part of our current work is working with the learning provider workforce to ensure training providers feel confident and ready to be able to include digital in the current training provision that’s offered.

This is linked to delivering the newly developed Level 5 Digital Leadership Award.

Our digital leadership programme, in conjunction with the National Care Forum (NCF) is now officially launched. This programme supports managers and leaders with building their own digital skills and confidence and developing their team.

This is just a snapshot of some of the key work we have ongoing at Skills for Care to support with digital skills.

Find out more about #BuildingDigitalConfidence by visiting our campaign landing page.

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