The new care training certificate is set to be introduced in March 2015, and minister Norman Lamb has confirmed that communication skills will form a basic requirement. This is a challenge, but one to be welcomed. As a sector if we are employing staff who don’t have a basic grasp of the English language how can we hope to deliver personalised care plans? We encourage our clients to talk about their needs and express concerns and our staff need to be able to respond and act accordingly.
At Jewish Care we employ over 800 care staff. In line with sector-wide trends many of them were born outside of the UK and English is their second language. English levels for staff are tested at interview stage and we aim to recruit all staff to at least adult literacy level one.
The low literacy levels of frontline staff is something we have been concerned about for some time. Quality care is our primary concern; a great care worker with low literacy levels supersedes a poor care worker with an excellent grasp of the English language. We want the best care workers, and if that means that quality care comes with low literacy levels then we have a duty to address literacy.
In the past, staff looking to improve their literacy levels have been referred to group classes run by the local college. However, we became concerned about the limited impact of these classes. Two years ago, we started to explore alternative ways to support literacy improvement.
With an active volunteer network and limited money to invest in intensive support, our solution was to develop a one-to-one volunteer-led coaching project focused on developing work-based communication skills.
The volunteers supporting the project are professionals, with transferable skills relevant to developing literacy levels. A template for the programme was developed by a volunteer, and all volunteers recruited were required to attend training. This ensured volunteers understood the care workers’ role and helped them understand how to enhance communication skills for staff supporting people living with dementia.
Our minimal investment is in the training and support we provide to our volunteers. Alongside the initial training programme volunteers are required to attend bi-monthly meetings, facilitated by our learning and development team, to learn from each other, share ideas and discuss any issues. There is also a library of books and training material for volunteers, something they said was needed.
Measuring the success of the programme by increased literacy levels alone doesn’t do it justice. The real impact is in the increased confidence care workers have. Some staff have started doing work which they used to avoid because of the risk of making mistakes. One manager said the staff member undertaking coaching was a “different person”. One member of staff talked with gratitude about not only her increased confidence at work, but her ability to help her daughter with school homework for the first time.
When we launched the programme in 2011, uptake from staff was slower than we had anticipated. To date, 20 people have completed the programme and a further 11 are undertaking it at the moment.
We are aware that these numbers are only scratching at the surface. With a limited pool of volunteers, expanding the programme is going to be challenging. We need to recruit more volunteers with the right skill set to expand the programme, and this is proving difficult.
The majority of our volunteers come from within the Jewish community, the same community our clients and their families are from. To embark on a volunteer recruitment drive requires us to raise awareness of this issue in the community. We do have worries that this in turn will raise concerns from current and future clients about our ability to provide quality care. Low literacy levels of frontline care staff is not an issue the sector is vocal about, and this doesn’t help us in our quest for change.
We know, from customers’ feedback, that our staff provide excellent care. But we believe that as an employer we can help to improve literacy and in turn the confidence of our staff. Our experience indicates this comes with a raft of additional benefits to us, the individual and the volunteers.
And with the introduction of the care certificate, combined with the current pool of candidates for frontline care roles, the sector is going to have to find innovative ways to increase literacy levels among staff.
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