Abstract
The ‘Care Certificate’ was introduced in April 2015 as a new training programme that all new care workers (Health Care Assistants and Social Support Workers) should achieve before working unsupervised. This research aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Care Certificate in achieving an improved induction and training so that care workers are better-prepared to provide high quality care. We carried out a national telephone survey with 401 staff who have responsibility for the induction of care workers in care organisations. We also interviewed 68 care staff and 24 managers at 10 different care organisations to get a more detailed understanding of their experiences of the Care Certificate training. We found that the uptake of the Care Certificate has been good, and it is widely welcomed as providing a standardised approach to improving the care skills and confidence of those new to care. However, there is a proportion of smaller care organisations where the Care Certificate has not been implemented, largely due to lack of resources and capacity. The Care Certificate was not widely used as a transferable qualification to support the movement of care staff between organisations. Most organisations required new recruits who had completed the Care Certificate elsewhere to repeat some or all of this training due to scepticism about the quality of any prior training. There has been considerable variation in how the Care Certificate is being used which has undermined the credibility and portability of the Care Certificate, leading to calls for greater regulation and standardisation in its provision. Organisational size, leadership, capacity and resources were major factors in determining the effectiveness of Care Certificate. Where organisations had the resources to devote particular staff to develop the training or adapt it into their existing induction programmes, then the potential benefits of the Care Certificate were most likely to be reported.