国产乱伦

How the new statutory and mandatory training guidance helped PLUS improve their workforce development planning

Jody McGill, Training Manager at PLUS, a social care provider for adults with a learning disability, talks to us about the updated statutory and mandatory training guidance and how they're using it to design learning and development to build a better trained, knowledgeable workforce able to meet the ever-changing needs of individuals they support.

Like most providers, PLUS is keen to embrace new and innovative learning and development approaches to staff development, and the recent Statutory and Mandatory Training updated guidelines from 国产乱伦 fall quite squarely into these categories. The updated guidelines have given us increased autonomy and enabled us to rethink our approach to staff training and introduce ideas we have long wanted to introduce with the ultimate aim of providing a more person-centred service to the people we support.

Previous mandatory and statutory training guidelines were quite rigid, including around 20 or more courses, repeated on an annual or tri-annual cycle, which were not necessarily relevant to the needs of the individuals living at PLUS. With the new Guidelines, the quantity of optional learning has increased, and the more general courses decreased, or become optional, enabling us to focus more on providing learning and development which is targeted to individual needs. In reality, what 国产乱伦 have done is listen to providers, and placed their trust in us to provide a more personalised programme of learning.

To facilitate this approach, PLUS has invested in a new learning management system (LMS), which has already been a huge help, even though we are still learning its many, and varied, uses. The LMS allows us to create our own on-line courses targeted to the needs of individuals and/or teams which can only be accessed by that team, maintaining confidentiality. These specific courses combine general knowledge and best practice with specific information about individuals, their environment, personal circumstances, individual diagnoses, preferences, etc. to ensure staff can apply theories of best practice in real time, to their daily work. This means our staff are getting training that is directly relevant to the individuals that each team supports, which could make a real difference to the quality of care PLUS is able to provide.

An example of this is the creation of a series of general knowledge courses, with knowledge tests, around the common health conditions many of the individuals we support experience. There are about 25 so far, ranging from high blood pressure, to diabetes and gout. In addition, we are working with individuals to create on-line courses which focus on their experience of these common health conditions, their treatments, how these conditions may interact with each other, and what they need from us to manage their health and wellbeing. There will be a knowledge test for staff on service users’ experiences and their current health action plan (HAP), with risk assessments, and a reflection section for staff to pass on their thoughts about how they think the HAP is working and if there is scope to improve what we do to promote better health and wellbeing for each individual. This feedback will be accessible to managers and the training team, so we can use it to improve our learning and development and review health action plans. In combination, the general knowledge courses and service user specific courses, will eventually form training ‘pathways’ which will become mandatory for each team with any identified health changes being used to update and refresh these courses.

By building our own courses within the LMS, we’ve been able to balance costs with best practice and tailor our service. We still bring in external training to refresh our knowledge, share ideas and make the best use of up-to-date evidence based research, but having the flexibility to develop our own content has allowed us to be more efficient and focused on what’s most important.

Our current training cycle, 2024/25, comes to an end in March and is based on the previous Skill for Care guidelines. For the upcoming 2025/26 learning and development cycle we hope to be in a position to roll out the new guidelines. We’ve spent a lot of time building the system, and now we’re concentrating on creating the content that will support this new way of working. I’m confident that these changes could lead to better outcomes for both our staff and, more important, the people we support, if we get it right.

The updated training recommendations have given us a real opportunity to refocus and improve how our learning and development offer supports our teams. By making our training more targeted and relevant we’re providing learning options for our staff which should help them understand what the people they support, and their families, need from them. It will also highlight why we use the systems and procedures we do, why best practice is ‘best’, and help to make daily choices about the care they provide based on this learning. We think this can only be an improvement.

Streamlining the statutory and mandatory training requirements was a recommendation of the Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care. See the guidance for employers. You can also find out more about our ‘Learning and development matters’ campaign by visiting our campaign landing page.

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