The Care Certificate Overview
The Care Certificate is an identified set of standards that health and social care workers adhere to in their daily working life. Designed with the non-regulated workforce in mind, the Care Certificate gives everyone the confidence that workers have the same introductory skills, knowledge and behaviours to provide compassionate, safe and high quality care and support.
The Care Certificate was developed jointly by Skills for Health, Health Education England and Skills for Care and is based on 15 standards, all of which individuals need to complete in full before they can be awarded their certificate:
- 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 disability
- Safeguarding adults
- Safeguarding Children
- Basic Life Support
- Health and Safety
- Handling information
- Infection prevention and control
Each standard is underpinned by full learning outcomes and assessment criteria.
Care Certificate resources
As well as the standards themselves you can find a series of additional resources to help you to use the Care Certificate with your staff, including:
Updates to the Care Certificate
Working with Skills for Care, who have been commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), Skills for Health are undertaking a light touch review to align the existing Care Certificate Standards with sectoral developments and the introduction of the Level 2 Adult Social Care Certificate qualification. The current standards will remain available as a tool to support employers provide a robust induction programme. In adult social care it will act as a platform to support progression onto the new Level 2 Adult Social Care Certificate qualification. The updated Care Certificate Standards will be available in Spring 2025.
Care Certificate eLearning
The Skills for Health Care Certificate eLearning bundle provides a set of high-quality online courses aligned to the Care Certificate standards. The bundle is designed to complement work-based assessment of skills by a competent assessor. The course is designed for all staff working in the fields of health and care who are working towards the Care Certificate.
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Skills for Health are one of the architects of the Care Certificate, therefore, you can be assured that our training is directly designed to meet those standards with first-hand knowledge of what those requirements are.