National homecare provider Right at Home UK has used the new Care Act legislation as an opportunity to introduce the country’s first City & Guilds accredited Care Certificate training platform.

As part of the Care Act 2014, all care providers in England must begin training their carers to pass 15 new core standards in order to achieve a Care Certificate.

These standards acknowledge the importance of person-centred care and are significantly further reaching than the outgoing National Minimum Standards, with an increased focus on delivering quality care with compassion and dignity.

They are assessed within the working environment, i.e. a client’s home, as well as within the training room or via e-learning.

The Care Certificate will be introduced from April 1^st 2015 and the Government has given providers a maximum of six months to ensure their induction training is restructured around its core principles.

Right at Home UK Managing Director Ken Deary says he and his local owner/operators welcome the changes and plan to be at the forefront of implementing them, with their offices ready to launch their own Care Certificate at the earliest opportunity.

He said: “We fully support the introduction of the Care Certificate. To us, caring for vulnerable adults and seniors involves much more than simply completing tasks – it centres on choice, compassion, dignity and respect; and of ensuring that each individual can decide how they would like to be supported.

“At Right at Home we always aim to significantly surpass the required national standards and we pride ourselves on going above and beyond usual expectations when we deliver care. We welcome the fact that the Care Certificate will require all care providers to show much greater commitment to training their staff to high standards and promoting their clients’ overall well-being.

“We have used this opportunity to work with Affinity Training to build a new first class learning platform for our CareGivers to ensure that anyone joining the company from April 1^st achieves a Right at Home and City & Guilds accredited Care Certificate. In the near future our network of local offices will also roll out the new standards across their existing staff.”

Under the Care Certificate requirements, individual CareGivers must show clear evidence that they have competently met 15 specific standards; that they have been assessed for their skills, knowledge and behaviour; that their behaviour has been caring and compassionate and that the services they have delivered have been of a consistently high quality.

Care providers must show that they have delivered the appropriate training, maintained records of evidence and assessment, and ensured that all assessment decisions are auditable.

A Right at Home Care Certificate will only be awarded once all 15 areas have been met to the required standards.