Home Instead Senior Care has joined forces with the End of Life Partnership charity to launch a new City & Guilds accredited programme in end of life care to support its 9,000 CAREGivers.

The programme is the latest to be added to the comprehensive training and development provided by Home Instead, regarded as business-critical and designed to support each franchise to recruit and retain high quality CAREGivers.

As demand for end-of-life care at home rises, the UK’s leading homecare franchisor has unveiled the bespoke training programme to help its CAREGivers cope with the practical and emotional demands.

The aim is two-fold: to support CAREGivers in an emotionally challenging strand of care work and to improve the quality of the care provided to clients.  The course, made of up five modules, includes an introduction to palliative, end of life and terminal care; aspects of care with emphasis on oral care (poor oral hygiene can worsen the health of a client receiving palliative care), symptom management including mindfulness and relaxation alongside communication, loss, grief and bereavement.

“With an estimated 60 per cent of people in the UK wishing to die at home, and rising pressure on NHS and social care resources, it is clear that more end-of-life care is going to be delivered in people’s own homes. We want to be sure our CAREGivers are fully prepared and thoroughly supported,” said Martin Jones, Managing Director at Home Instead Senior Care.

“Rather than use something off the shelf, we have invested in creating our own training programme that reflects the specific requirements of our unique model of relationship-based, non-medical care. Uniquely, we have focused as much on the needs of our CAREGivers as we have on the care provided to our clients.”

Amanda Scott, from Home Instead’s Ipswich office, was one of 39 CAREGivers who completed the pilot training course.  She said: “Death is not a nice subject but this training makes you think completely differently. It definitely makes me feel better supported.”

Ispwich franchise owner Chris Lye said: “The importance that Home Instead places on training and development was one of the things that attracted me to them as a franchisor. I know how important it is for my business that I can retain my best CAREGivers and the way to do that is to enable them to do the best job they can do and support them as much as we can. This training will definitely help to do that.”

Liz Deakin, Business Development Director from City & Guilds said: “City & Guilds Accredited Programme status demonstrates to employees, and those receiving care, that Home Instead is committed to investing in them. This commitment is not only raising standards which ultimately benefits employees and their development, but it’s also allowing even better care to be provided to individuals who need it.”

The training will now be launched to Home Instead’s 195-office UK network. Mr Jones added: “We continue to make serious investment in training and development. It’s critical to the recruitment and retention of our caregivers, who are the backbone of what we do, and why we received the Best Large Employer in Care award for the 2^nd year running.”

The end of life accredited programme is the company’s second City & Guilds accredited course; its Alzheimer’s Care Programme, launched in 2012, has so far been completed by over 4,000 caregivers.

There are 115 territories and 4 territory resales available with Home Instead for people who want to be their own boss and franchise with a true innovator.