Workforce means all staff who work with people with learning disabilities. Because Valuing People says that services should change, this means that staff will have to change too. This might mean new kinds of jobs, or working in new ways. This means we need to think about how to get the right people into these jobs, how to make sure they have the right training, and how to make sure they want to stay working with people with learning disabilities, if
they are good at it. Valuing People talks about people getting a good deal from all public services, so workforce should also cover the training and help staff in these services get, so they can do a good job for people with learning disabilities.
What does Valuing People say?
The government wants staff who work with people with learning disabilities to have the right skills and training to do their jobs well. It wants people who work in all services to understand more about people with learning disabilities. Government Objective: To ensure that social and health care staff working with people with learning disabilities are appropriately skilled, trained and qualified; and to promote a better understanding of the needs
of people with learning disabilities amongst the wider workforce. When Valuing People was written it said:
We think there are about 83,000 staff working in services for people with learning disabilities
Most of these people (we think 75% of them) don't have qualifications that are to do with these jobs
It can be difficult to find and keep staff, including professionals
People don't always think working with people with learning disablities is a good job to have (it has a low status)
There are not many accredited training qualifications that are recognised
People have not thought much about workforce planning
Not everyone is involving people with learning disabilities or family carers in training or planning.
'Health and Social Care Workforce Strategies' to provide new opportunities for learning disability staff
New qualifications called the Learning Disability Awards Framework came in April 2002
Some money from the 'Learning Disability Development Fund' would go to to help make more leaders and help people who are leaders get more skills.
Each Partnership Board would have to write local Workforce Planning and Training Plans
Learning Disability Knowledge Sets
Skills for Care have developed five Learning Disability Knowledge Sets they are available on the Skills for Care website:
- History and context of learning disability services
- Communication
- Relationships
- Accessing and using information
- Independence and well being
Knowledge Sets are a collection of key learning outcomes for specific areas of work within adult social care. They are designed to improve consistency in the underpinning knowledge learnt by the adult social care workforce in England.
It is intended that the key learning outcomes within each knowledge set will be used by employers to develop in-house learning and by training providers, publishers and awarding bodies to produce learning programmes, resources (cd-roms, videos, workbooks) and, potentially, awards. The key learning outcomes are intended to provide minimum standardised outcomes that employers may use either to produce their own in-house learning or learning packages or as a benchmark
when buying in learning provision or learning packages.
This is a joint letter from Skills for Care and the Valuing People Support Team regarding learning disability knowledge sets and the future direction of travel for qualifications for the Learning Disability workforce. This letter can also be found on the Skills for Care web site at
For an easy read version of all this infomation please click here
Helpful papers
Format
What the information is
Interim statement and stakeholder engagement questions
It identifies the key issues for the workforce as set out in Putting People First and goes on to develop these into broader, strategic priorities for the workforce.
There are 5 questions at the end to guide stakeholder engagement. regional workforce networks have been requested to discuss and respond.
For more information download the PDF by clicking here
New Types of Work - New Types of Working (NToW)
The NToW programme is a 'Skills for Care'-led initiative, focused on exploring, highlighting and disseminating knowledge about workforce innovation in adult social care.
To look at the information for the NToW fund, please use the links below:
Skills for Care and the Valuing People Support Team have brought out a guide to Learning Disability Qualifications. To have a look at them, click on the following links:
This is an easy read version of the report "Everything Partnership Boards Need To Know About Workforce Development". The South East Workforce Network helped to put this together Everything Partnership Boards need to know easy read version (PDF 132KB)
Learning disability services in Oxfordshire have recognised that employees often move from one service to another. We recognised that it is helpful to work together to market our organisations jointly. This document produced by 6 providers is a 'climbing frame' that actual and potential staff can use to gain experience whilst benefiting the services they work for. We aim to build on this and add other providers to it as well as planning a joint recruitment and retention strategy. LD Services in Oxfordshire Marketing Brochure
Review of Training (Powerpoint 105 KB) In the South West a small project group is reviewing the sort of training available for learning disability practitioners. The group hope to be able to run a new sort of university based training programme for practitioners in the future. This power point presentation talks about what the group hopes to do.
Workforce Abbreviations - what they mean (PDF 22 KB) There is a lot of jargon used in sorting out training for staff. This guide to some of the jargon has been put together by our Expert Advisor on Workforce Development. It tries to help everyone understand the jargon used most often by people.
Involving people with learning disabilities in training plans Scottish Borders Council wrote a training plan based on what people with learning disabilities and their families really wanted. there is a DVD that you can buy that tells you how they did this. It is called 'calling the Shots'. You can find out more from www.scld.org.uk
Choosing Staff is a project where people have been trained to be involved in recuiting staff. There is a booklet and CD with training session details and resource materials. Find out more by clicking this sentence. (Word 30 KB)
We help to improve services and achieve better outcomes for children and families, adults and older people including those with mental health problems, physical or learning disabilities or people in the criminal justice system. We work with and are funded by
