The Care Certificate is an identified set of standards that health and social care workers adhere to in their daily working life. Designed with the non-regulated workforce in mind, the Care Certificate gives everyone the confidence that workers have the same introductory skills, knowledge and behaviours to provide compassionate, safe and high quality care and support.
The Care Certificate is based on 15 standards, all of which individuals need to complete in full before they can be awarded their certificate:
- Understand your role
- Your personal development
- Duty of care
- Equality and diversity
- Work in a person centred way
- Communication
- Privacy and dignity
- Fluids and nutrition
- Awareness of mental health, dementia and learning disability
- Safeguarding adults
- Safeguarding Children
- Basic Life Support
- Health and Safety
- Handling information
- Infection prevention and control
Each standard is underpinned by full learning outcomes and assessment criteria.
A selection of materials is available to support you as you implement the Care Certificate in your workplace.
Materials:
The standards
Full details of each standard will be covered in this document.
Guidance
Mapping to other health and social care resources
Assessor framework
Self-assessment tool
Certificate template
A template of the partnership approved Certificate can be found below. This is to award employees who have completed the Care Certificate.
The Care Certificate - PDF Version
Employers also have the choice to implement their own logo onto the Care Certificate to issue. For these employers we must make you aware that the certificate is only valid if the Care Certificate logo remains on the top right and their organisation's appears on the bottom right. Please find an editable version below:
Workbooks
For an introduction to the Care Certificate workbook please download the Care Certificate Introduction. The accompanying Glossary contains a useful definition of terms.
A Zip file containing all the workbooks is also available. You can also download a 'print friendly' version of the workbooks in this ZIP file.
The assessments in these workbooks contain fillable form fields. If the workbooks are filled in on your computer it can be saved using ‘Save as’.
Care Certificate workbook: last updated June 2018.
Please note due to the introduction of the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) we've made some changes to the Care Certificate workbook. This is to ensure the workbook is compliant with GDPR and that the learner is aware of the recent changes. We've also taken the opportunity to update the wording in module 5 "Work in a person centred way". The wording has been changed to reflect person-centred practices across health and social care. The information included within the section, and its outcome, remain unchanged. All links within the workbook have also been checked and refreshed, ensuring that all information is relevant and up-to-date.
Care Certificate Presentations
Skills for Care, Skills for Health and Health Education England have developed accompanying slides to support the delivery of the underpinning knowledge for the Care Certificate. These presentations complement the Care Certificate Workbook.
Important: Please note we have not published presentations for the following: Standard 10, Standard 11, Standard 12 and Standard 13. It was agreed between the partnership organisations that we would not develop content for areas that may require specialist knowledge or expertise. We agreed that those who have a responsibility to deliver the underpinning knowledge for these standards should already have access to relevant materials to deliver the learning. The learning elements of those standards are still available through the free Care Certificate Workbook and employers can complement this further with their own internal training and workplace assessment. Please also note that the presentation for Standard 9 has been taken down while it is being updated to reflect the changes in the revised Workbook. The updated presentation will be published shortly.
- The Care Certificate Presentation - Introduction
- The Care Certificate Presentation - 1. Understand your role
- The Care Certificate Presentation - 2. Your personal development
- The Care Certificate Presentation - 3. Duty of care
- The Care Certificate Presentation - 4. Equality and diversity
- The Care Certificate Presentation - 5. Work in a person centred way
- The Care Certificate Presentation - 6. Communication
- The Care Certificate Presentation - 7. Privacy and dignity
- The Care Certificate Presentation - 8. Fluids and nutrition
- The Care Certificate Presentation - 14. Handling information
- The Care Certificate Presentation - 15. Infection prevention and control
Further resources
FAQs
Questions and Answers for the Care Certificate:
Code of Conduct for Healthcare Support Workers and Adult Social Care Workers
The Care Certificate - Setting the standards for frontline care
Supporting the Care Certificate
We work hard to improve the quality of training provision available to healthcare support workers and to ensure managers know how and where they can access great training for their staff.
The National Skills Academy for Health are developing a network of Excellence Centres and approved delivery partners put employers in charge of local learning, helping you to share scarce resources and to develop and deliver cost-effective training to meet Care Certificate requirements.
In addition, the Skills for Health Quality Mark, provides a framework that defines and endorses superior learning and training standards that healthcare employers need to cultivate a world-class workforce.
By selecting a provider who holds the Quality Mark for your Care Certificate development programmes, you can be sure that the training will be of a consistent high quality and will demonstrate to your community your commitment to excellence in workforce development and patient care.
Assessor development and resources
The National Skills Academy’s interactive sessions for assessors and mentors will launch soon and provide Care Certificate assessors with practical tools, knowledge and confidence to successfully undertake their role in making clear and consistent assessment decisions.
Elearning
As part of our continuing development of our elearning, Skills for Health has developed a range of elearning that supports the Care Certificate. Download our new Elearning brochure or found out more about our Elearning.
The Care Certificate was developed, as part of the Cavendish Review work, jointly by Skills for Health, Health Education England and Skills for Care. It:
- applies across health and social care
- links to National Occupational Standards and units in qualifications
- covers what is required to be caring, giving workers a good basis from which they can further develop their knowledge and skills
