At one of Borough Care’s 11 residential homes in Stockport, staff are putting on weighted gloves and donning restricted vision glasses before trying to make a jam sandwich, sign a form, and navigate their way around a room. “It’s really amazing to see staff go ‘oh!’” says learning development manager Nicola Chatterton about the activity, which is part of the group’s dementia training. “As much as [our staff] are really patient, empathetic, compassionate people – to actually see and feel like a resident with dementia is really eye opening for them.”
It’s just one example of how staff training has evolved at Borough Care, which used to run “a lot of chalk and talk sessions” and workshops that lacked appeal to staff, says Chatterton. Now, there’s an e-learning portal called My Learning Cloud, which enables managers to build bespoke learning pathways for each member of staff; the Aspire and Leadership in Colour programmes, aimed at helping employees step up to the next level (including business skills training for managers); and support for staff to do apprenticeships.
“It’s a real way for us to show our staff that they don’t just have a job with us – if they would like to build a career in adult social care, we can help facilitate that,” says Chatterton. “And if we’ve got happy staff who are engaged with the organisation, we’re more able to get positive outcomes for our residents.”
In a sector that faces an average staff turnover rate of 30.8% and ever diminishing budgets, learning and development can come low on the priority list, says Jane Brightman, interim programme head for SLQA (standards, learning, qualifications and apprenticeships) at Skills for Care. But it’s one of the biggest factors that can improve employee retention and reduce an organisation’s reliance on expensive agency staff.
To help employers get it right, Skills for Care has published a Guide to Developing your Staff, with downloadable templates, free resources and advice, such as information on core and mandatory training, how to identify learning needs and skills gaps, set training objectives, and make budgets stretch further. Skills for Care also administers a government-funded workplace development fund, whereby employers can reclaim some of the costs of approved training.
“I think sometimes it’s just a lack of confidence [for employers] to know what it is they need to give to their staff in terms of development and where they access that,” says Brightman of improving learning and development provision across the sector. “[Some employers] panic and think: ‘I’ll just train my staff in everything, every year,’ but there are lots of frustrations for staff when training isn’t well thought through.”
Hendra House in Shropshire, which employs 38 people, won the best employer commitment to staff training and development at the Caring UK National Awards in 2019. “Two of the five business objectives revolve around staff and staff development,” says Hendra House’s owner Vince Burmingham. “Our aim is to have every member of staff accredited to a vocational qualification. That’s not just the care staff, that’s the housekeeping and hospitality staff as well – everyone’s valued equally.” The knock-on effect has meant staff turnover is low, and Burmingham is managing a waiting list for staff as well as residents. He’s found it really rewarding to see staff develop. “One of the ladies who is now on our senior management team [originally] joined us as a cleaner.”
Skills for Care’s locality manager in the north west, Carol Mitchell, believes the size of some social care organisations can pose a challenge when it comes to delivering training. “Eighty-six percent are organisations that employ less than 50 people,” she says. “So they don’t all have an HR manager, a training manager, a learning and development manager ... the registered manager often wears all of those different hats [and] it can seem really daunting.”
As well as directing employers looking for advice to the endorsed training provider directory on the Skills for Care site, Mitchell also encourages them to work more collaboratively with each other. It can sometimes be difficult for smaller employers to release staff for an external training session, for example, so “what some of them do is pay for 12 people but only send six on it”, she says. That’s expensive. By offering those spare spaces to other providers in the area, employers can save money.
The key is applying a person-centred approach to staff development, just as employers do to those residents they support, Mitchell says. “[And] if someone doesn’t have those career aspirations to be a manager, that’s absolutely fine. We need people who want to stay doing those frontline jobs. But they’ve got to continue their learning and development as well.”
“Talk to your staff, talk to the people that access your service,” says Brightman. “Find out where they think the gaps are. Know what your budget is for the year and really start to plan around it – any change, any action will be positive.”
