News & Views - Care

Which career path?

With a record 40,000 people taking the Apprenticeship route into adult social care last year, it's now a serious career path option.

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Skills for Care has created the career pathways e-tool to help make working in social care not just a good job, but a great career. The e-tool is for people considering starting in social care and for those already working in the sector who are keen to see what career development opportunities there are.

There is an interactive career pathways matrix that allows users to match their particular social care interest against job 'levels' to find what roles they could move into, and to see what range of qualifications are needed for those roles. For more information click here Add a comment

Naidex National 1-3 May 2012

Naidex is the UK’s largest homecare, disability and rehabilitation event with over 11,000 occupational therapists, physiotherapists and service users attending featuring the latest products and services to aid independent living.

Visit the show at Birmingham's NEC from 1-3 May 2012. The Naidex Excellence Awards form an integral part of the event which will celebrate best practice, innovation, independent thinking and improvements to care.

The Naidex Excellence Awards is your chance to be recognised for your excellent work by your peers and a panel of expert judges. If you have a project that would save others resources, time and improve the quality of care they provide you will be able to submit a poster to the judging panel.

Entrance to the awards is FREE. To find out more click here. Add a comment

National Skills Academy for Social Care welcomes report into improving dignity for older people

Better leadership at every level of worker will result in better care for older people, according to the National Skills Academy for Social Care.

Responding to a recent report by the Commission on Improving Dignity in Care for Older People, the National Skills Academy welcomed the call for greater emphasis on compassionate carers, and the encouragement for staff at all levels to challenge bad practice.

"The Academy has been working tirelessly for over two years to address the key recommendations in the Commission’s report relating to changing the culture of care, so that people working in a care setting, whatever their role and their level, can feel confident in taking responsibility for their own practice and addressing shortcomings elsewhere," said Diane Lawson, chief executive of the Skills Academy.

"We know from our own research that the importance of leadership is already acknowledged in the sector: in a pan-sector survey carried out for the Academy at the end of 2011, 94% of respondents made a direct link between quality of leadership and quality of services. And leadership behaviours are fundamentally based on social care values, so that, as Sir Keith Pearson, one of the report authors, states: ‘Recruiting for values...is enormously important.’
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Apprentice 540
Marking National Apprenticeship Week the Prime Minister David Cameron today announced a new round of Government funding to support thousands of apprenticeships up to degree equivalent, helping deliver the world class skills firms need to drive growth.

From today, businesses and training providers can bid for a share of £6m from the Higher Apprenticeship Fund, which will support the development of thousands of new Higher Apprenticeships in sectors including aerospace, energy and renewable technologies.

The Prime Minister also opened the bidding for the new Employer Ownership pilot, inviting employers in England to apply to access up to £250m of public investment and secure more control over how skills training is designed and delivered.

He also announced that from this week, small firms will be offered an incentive of £1,500 to hire their first young apprentices. This is expected to support up to 40,000 new apprenticeships over the next year.

Only Social Care Reform Will Keep the NHS From its Deathbed

Politics is coming home. While external events, such as the Arab Spring and the eurowinter, will continue to reshape the world of 2012, expect the focus to shift to the domestic. America, France, Russia and China are holding elections, with all the apple pie and internal posturing that entails. In Britain, stand by for gloom and glory.

The Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games will celebrate tradition and highlight progress, with Shakespeare in the streets, a warship in the Thames and fighter planes on standby. Arcane pageantry and 21st-century choreography will showcase a nation that once ruled the waves and needs, at a minimum, to prove that it will not be sunk by an economic riptide.
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