The importance of carer training courses can’t be overstated.
Whether you’re a family carer, a PA for an individual, or work for an organisation, training can help you and your clients stay safe.
And, if you’re an employer, you have a responsibility to your staff team and your service users to make sure that your care workers are trained to carry out their role safely and competently.
In this article, we’ll explain what mandatory training for carers is, how employers can arrange training, and home carer training for family carers.
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What training do you need to be a carer?
In many cases, you don’t need any qualifications before you become a carer. You don’t need to have a certain number of GCSEs or A-levels, and lots of people choose social care as their first job, with no experience working elsewhere.
What’s most important is having the right personality and the willingness to learn. Your employer should support you to access the training you need.
Whether you work in a care home, day centre, or provide home care, your employer has a responsibility to make sure that you are working safely and know how to carry out your duties.
If you care for a family member at home, there’s no compulsory training. So if you support your parent, you don’t need to attend home carer courses – unless, of course, you want to and think that they’d be useful.
Later on in this article, we’ll explain how to find courses for carers of the elderly and other people with complex health conditions or additional needs.
However, if you get paid by an employer to provide care and support for clients, you must receive some training.
There are several different types of training for care workers, including:
- Statutory training: This is training that’s required by law. Although it doesn’t have the word mandatory in it, this training is compulsory for all care workers.
- Mandatory training: Mandatory training for care workers is training that your employer requires you to take.
- Care qualifications: Qualifications in care might not be compulsory for all care workers, but many organisations encourage or require their staff to take them. This might include NVQs in health and social care.
- Further education: Some care workers might choose to take their training further. They could complete a diploma or degree in health and social care, or take specialised carer training courses in supporting autistic clients or people with dementia, for example.
Let’s look at the compulsory types of training in more detail – and find out what the mandatory training for care workers is.
Statutory training
Some statutory training is required for everyone who works in adult social care, whether they provide care or not. So everyone in your organisation, even if they work in payroll or IT, will need to take these courses.
These include:
- Health and safety awareness
- Fire safety
- Moving and handling objects
- Safeguarding – this could be either adult safeguarding, child safeguarding, or both, depending on the clients your organisation supports
- Infection prevention and control
- Learning disability and autism awareness, if your organisation supports autistic people or those with learning disabilities
To support carers in delivering personalised and effective care, many organisations use care planning software to document training records, update care plans, and track compliance with essential training requirements.
Other, more advanced, training is needed for care workers. This includes:
- Moving and handling people
- First aid and basic life support
- Food hygiene
- Medication administration (and using eMAR systems like PASS)
Because this training is so crucial, you’ll probably need to do it as part of your induction when you join an organisation – before you’re allowed to provide care and support for clients by yourself.
Much of this training is required by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) – so it could be considered to be CQC mandatory training for care workers.
Mandatory training
Even though mandatory training might not be required by law, it’s training that your employer considers compulsory.
Every organisation has different policies, depending on the work they do, the clients they support, and the environment they work in.
If you’re looking for a list of mandatory training for care workers, it might include:
- End of life care
- Mental capacity
- Supporting communication needs
- How to care for clients with specific health needs, such as dementia
- GDPR and data protection
- Digital skills and technology use in the workplace
However, your employer might have additional mandatory training requirements.
What is the Care Certificate?
Some employers may require their new starters to complete the Care Certificate. This is a framework that explains the minimum that care workers should know when they start their role.
It’s aimed at care workers, healthcare assistants, and others who provide care and support to individuals as part of their job. If you’re a nurse, occupational therapist, or social worker, you’ll have covered this in your training, so you shouldn’t need to complete the Care Certificate.
The Care Certificate has 15 standards:
- Understand your role
- Your personal development
- Duty of care
- Equality and diversity
- Work in a person-centred way
- Communication
- Privacy and dignity
- Fluids and nutrition
- Awareness of mental health, dementia, and learning disabilities
- Safeguarding adults
- Safeguarding children
- Basic life support
- Health and safety
- Handling information
- Infection prevention and control
You’ll notice that some of these are already statutory or mandatory training for carers.
Home carer training as an employer
If you’re an employer, you probably already know the value of providing carer training courses for your staff team. Whether you run training sessions with in-house trainers or pay for your care workers to take external courses, you’ll quickly see the benefits.
The advantages of running carer training courses for your staff team include:
- Fulfilling your regulatory requirements: CQC requires that social care providers have an induction and training programme that prepares care workers for their role.
- Improved client safety: When your staff team have the skills to safely and effectively carry out their role, you reduce the risk of issues like medication errors and accidental injuries. Care workers who understand the signs of abuse are more likely to speak up if they see an issue, keeping your clients safe.
- Improved staff safety: As well as keeping your service users safe, good training can help your staff team too. Proper moving and handling practices reduce the risk of injury for your care workers, for example.
- Improved staff retention: Care workers who feel valued in their role are more likely to stay with your organisation. Investing in their training and development – especially beyond the statutory and mandatory training – is a good way to show your staff that you see their worth.
Employers can also enhance service quality by using home care software to monitor staff training, schedule refresher courses, and ensure compliance with CQC requirements.
What carer training courses do I need to provide?
You should make sure that your care workers are provided with the statutory training that we’ve listed above.
Additionally, if you work for a larger organisation, they may have policies about mandatory training. Or, if you run a small care home or agency, you should think about what other training your care workers will need.
For example, if you provide lots of clients with end of life care or dementia support, you may want to arrange training on these topics.
If you move to a new computer system or notice that there’s an area where your team are struggling, some one-off training sessions for your staff might help.
Some of your care workers may want to take additional training sessions as part of their professional development. While it’s not compulsory, you may be able to arrange these in house, or provide funding for them to take further education elsewhere. To keep track of your team’s goals and professional development, you could use a digital solution like a Document Builder. This can help you create a range of digital care documents, including employee details.
To streamline training records and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, many providers turn to care management software, which helps keep track of staff development and mandatory training updates.
Training should also be a key part of your onboarding programme. Whenever you hire a new team member, you should make sure they complete your organisation’s induction. This may include:
- Statutory training for carers
- Mandatory training for carers
- Shadowing another care worker for a number of shifts
- Completing the Care Certificate or another qualification, especially if they’ve never worked in care before
How often should I run carer training courses?
You should make sure that all new starters complete your organisation’s induction programme before they begin to work independently. Depending on how often your hire new staff, this might mean that you run home carer training sessions every few weeks for several new team members, or that you provide one-on-one carer training courses for individual new employees.
Once a carer has completed their induction, they’ll need to update their training regularly. This may be every six months, or one, two or three years, depending on the training and your organisation’s policies.
However, if circumstances change drastically, you may need to run additional training sessions in between refresher sessions – for example, if you move to a new building, you may need to run new fire safety courses.
If you’re wondering how to keep track of your team’s training records, consider using Employee Checklists. Our tool can help you create onboarding checklists for new starters, and also allows you to set reminders for regular training sessions, so that your staff team don’t fall behind with their mandatory and statutory training.
Where do I find carer training courses for myself?
If you work for an organisation or an individual employer, they should provide training for you.
However, if you care for a family member or friend, you might want to take a carer course to learn more about how to support them. Alternatively, if you’re considering beginning a career in care, perhaps you want to have some courses on your CV before you apply for your first role.
Home carer courses
If you’ve had a carer’s assessment from your local authority, you may be given details of home carer training courses. Depending on your circumstances, the local authority may also pay for you to attend these sessions.
Even if you don’t qualify for support from your local authority, there are other places to find carer training courses.
Your local carer service may be able to signpost you to courses, and FutureLearn provides a range of online courses on Understanding Dementia.
Moving on from caring
If you’re a family carer for a loved one, you might want to move on from caring one day. Many family carers worry that they won’t have the skills to find work later on – especially if they’ve been supporting their loved one for a long time, or if they’ve never worked outside the home.
Whether you want to work in social care or start an entirely new career, there are options out there for you. You might want to start with getting back into education to improve your skills.
The Carers Trust offers information on how to get into studying, or you could contact local colleges. The National Careers Service can also help signpost you towards courses and career paths.
Conclusion
Compulsory training for carers includes a wide range of courses, such as fire safety, safeguarding, and moving and handling. The compulsory training is divided into two types: statutory and mandatory training for carers. Statutory training is required by law, and mandatory training is required by the organisation or employer.
As a carer or care provider, it’s crucial to make sure that you and your colleagues are up to date on all the necessary training. Whether you support clients in their own homes or work in a residential facility, good carer training can help keep you and your clients safe.
