If you are thinking of developing a training programme for carers, then introducing Quality Standards at an early stage will help you to measure the impact of the training you deliver.
The Heart of Scottish Carer Training
If you are thinking of developing a training programme for carers, then introducing Quality Standards at an early stage will help you to measure the impact of the training you deliver.
The aim of Carer Training Quality Standards is to support organisations to deliver high quality training for carers. These standards are not intended to prescribe specifically how training should be developed. Instead, they aim to reflect the diversity of agencies currently delivering training, and provide carer training standards and good practice examples, which will allow you to benchmark the quality of your training.
The standards have been developed in the form of a self‐assessment framework to help providers of carer training to measure their training against a set of quality areas and indicators, which cover all stages of the training cycle. This framework allows you to work through each of the quality areas to objectively assess how well you meet each of the indicators for the standards, with examples of evidence you could use to demonstrate this.
Your self‐assessment should involve two or more people from your organisation. They should have a good understanding of your service or have regular contact with carers. Self‐assessment helps you to identify the areas where you fully meet the standard as well as those where you would want to make some improvements. You can find a sample self‐assessment form [here] .
The Carer Training Quality Standards have been designed for any organisation involved in providing training for carers. Whether you work in the public or voluntary sector, by embracing these standards you will give a clear message of your commitment and continuous striving for improvement.
Applying the Quality Standards to your approach in carer training helps ensure you:
• Respond effectively to the training needs of carers
• Develop and deliver high quality training
• Evidence the outcome benefits to carers
• Promote good practice
• Evidence your commitment to continuous quality improvement.
Applying the quality standards will help ensure:
• Consistency in the quality of training delivered to carers
• Increased access to training opportunities
• Carers have a positive experience from the training opportunity.
The Quality Standards are set within six key areas of training activity. These are areas you would expect to engage in when developing and delivering training for carers.
Indicators:
Indicators:
Indicators:
Indicators:
Indicators:
Indicators:
Each quality area contains a number of standards. These describe the level of quality you set out to achieve in each of the quality areas. Alongside each of the standards are a number of indicators. These describe the kind of activities you might expect to undertake in order to meet the standard to benchmark the quality of your training provision.
We have offered some examples of the types of evidence you might look for to help you decide how well you meet a particular indicator. This is not a prescriptive list and you may have other documents or a procedure to demonstrate how you meet a particular indicator.
Carers, though unpaid, are a key part of social care provision of the future, and as such should enjoy rights to free, good quality training to build their knowledge, confidence and ability in their caring role.
Many national and local organisations, NHS boards and local authorities provide training programmes for carers. Across this range of providers, there is wide diversity not only in the size of the organisation itself but in the unique challenges they face in delivering their services to carers. There are also differing levels of training standards, quality and accessibility.
The Scottish Government’s strategies for carers and young carers state that ‘carers should have similar opportunities for training as the paid workforce’. These strategies set out various actions to help ensure carers achieve positive outcomes from training. To help implement these actions the National Carer Organisations Training Consortium was assigned to:
Further information is available at www.carers.org/contact-us