The care bill brings together care and support legislation into a single act with a new wellbeing principle at its heart. There are major implications for those working in social care.
As part of the preparation for the implementation of the care bill, Skills for Care has been asked by the Department of Health to lead on two programmes of work.
Capacity planning
To ensure organisations have the right numbers of people in the right roles to meet the care bill requirements, we are developing workforce capacity planning tools and resources in partnership with:
The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services
Centre for Workforce Intelligence
The College of Social Work
Local Government Association
The National Skills Academy for Social Care
Social Care Institute for Excellence
The aim of the tools will be to provide local authorities and social care employers with a model and digital resource that can be used to assess the capacity of their workforces to deliver new ways of working arising from the care and support reforms.
The tools and resources will complement products such as the workforce commissioning resources, the workforce outcome measurement model and the community skills programme.
A test version of the tool will be available from the end of March for organisations to use and provide feedback at skillsforcare.org.uk/carebill. The aim is to have a final version available for use in summer 2014.
Learning and development needs
In advance of the care bill coming into effect in April 2015, we're working in partnership with the National Skills Academy for Social Care and The College of Social Work to help identify and plan for the learning and development needs of the adult social care workforce in England.
This involves developing a programme that will identify what learning and development is needed to enable those working in adult social care to comply with the care bill requirements. It will look at whether changes are needed to existing adult social care principles, standards and qualifications.
A national consultation exercise is taking place to gather views on a learning and development plan - designed to identify which roles will be affected by the changes, together with a description of the skills and knowledge they will need to develop in order to deliver the requirements of the care bill successfully.
To take part and have your say visit skillsforcare.org.uk/carebill. The closing date is 11 April 2014.
Once finalised, the plan will be used to create free learning materials for use across the sector, specifically aimed at delivering the skills needed to meet the care bill requirements.
They will be designed to be adaptable so they can be used by all care and support organisations and agencies in England in a variety of situations.
Train the trainer style workshops will be introduced from July to October 2014 to ensure those delivering this will have the knowledge, skills and resources needed to deliver consistent learning and development to a high standard.
Delivery of the learning and development programme is expected to take place between October 2014 and April 2015.
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