| 21 August 2023
The Core Skills Training Framework (CSTF), which sets out statutory and mandatory training subjects for healthcare staff, is now up for review and open to public consultation.
Introduced by Skills for Health in 2013, the CSTF is adopted by 85% of NHS organisations in England and universally across the seven local health boards and three NHS trusts in Wales.
Whilst the Framework has undergone a series of incremental updates over the last 10 years, with the most recent being in 2021, its purpose remains constant: To set the benchmark standard for statutory and mandatory training in the health sector.
To ensure that it continues to be the recognised and trusted benchmark standard, Skills for Health and our partners NHS England and NHS Wales are delighted to invite you to contribute to this review. Your feedback will be used to update the content of the framework alongside advice and guidance from our subject matter experts.
You can provide feedback on as many subject areas covered by the Core Skills Training Framework as you like. As you progress through the survey you will be able to select which subjects you wish to comment on and skip forward over other subjects.
Current CSTF subjects include: Conflict Resolution (England); Equality, Diversity and Human Rights; Fire Safety; Health, Safety and Welfare; Infection Prevention and Control; Information Governance and Data Security; Moving and Handling; Preventing Radicalisation; Resuscitation; Safeguarding Adults; Safeguarding Children and Violence and Aggression (Wales).
The review also includes the proposal to add the following subjects: Learning Disability (Wales) and Learning Disability and Autism (England)
About the Core Skills Training Framework
The CSTF enables consistency in the delivery of onboarding training to an agreed standard, helping organisations to ground staff in the key fundamentals that underpin care delivery. The Framework also enables portability for statutory and mandatory training across the NHS, meaning that staff can move between employers compliantly without the need to duplicate their training.
Find out more about the CSTF >
About the Review
This latest review is the first public consultation regarding the Framework since the pandemic. The impact of the pandemic and priorities for recovery in the health sector means that organisations may not have revisited their statutory and mandatory training for some time and may be aligned to legacy versions of the Framework.
The review has been launched to ensure that the CSTF remains up to date with current legislation is relevant and reflective of the skills and knowledge that the healthcare workforce requires in the current landscape.
With a workforce well over 1 million, it is important that voices from across the workforce are represented and accounted for in the statutory and mandatory training subjects that the majority of NHS staff are required to undertake.
Against the backdrop of significant transformational change and challenge, with competing demands and expectations placed on all of the NHS, this public consultation ensures that the key fundamentals of workforce training can be adapted to remain current and up to date.
Workers on the frontline know best what patients need. They know from experience what statutory and mandatory training is required to deliver said care, which is why we are following a collaborative process which invites responses from across the workforce a whole.
Jon Czul, Head of Consultancy and Research, Skills for Health
The consultation begins on 21 August and is open until 16 October. Once completed, Skills for Health will review all feedback and collate the results to share with our subject matter experts. The results will then be used to inform amendments to the Core Skills Training Framework.
We are aiming to complete the review work by December 2023.