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| TX: 18.12.08 - National Skills Academy for Social Care PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON |
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| Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON In the spring, a new National Skills Academy for Social Care will open in England. It's been set up to improve the training of one and a half million care workers - it's the latest in a series of 14 skills academies that try to help employers to improve the standards among the people that they employ. It's a knowledge-sharing academy - it doesn't provide any direct training. So what difference will it make to the quality of social care that is available to elderly and disabled people? Earlier I spoke to Jennifer Bernard, she's the programme director of this new National Skills Academy for Social Care and I began by asking her to tell us a little bit more about its aims. BERNARD Employers go into social care because they want to do a really good job, so the purpose of the academy is to help them do everything they can to develop their own leadership and management skills and develop the skills that their staff need to do the best possible job for people who use social care services. ROBINSON When funding for care is tight and likely, as anything, I suppose, at the moment, to get tighter small care companies are under a lot of pressure financially, can they really invest in training - be realistic? BERNARD They of course have to invest in training to the extent that they are required to do that as a condition of their registration. But we do understand that money is tight, so the academy helping to show you where you're going to get best value from spending your money when you've got to do it or when you choose to do it seems to us to be real added value for them, in terms of making that money go further. ROBINSON The other problem for you, if you run a care service, is that staff turnover is very high, what often happens, as I'm sure you know, is somebody joins an organisation, they're promised there'll be training at some stage in the future but in fact they're then told they're straight out on the job with somebody who does know what they're doing - so you're actually doing it with no training - and if that person doesn't turn in rotas are so tight that you can be within a few days out looking after somebody with no training at all. BERNARD This should not of course happen. ROBINSON But you were nodding away when I was describing the scenario. BERNARD All employers are required to make sure that their staff have been through an induction training, so that they know what the basics of the job are and that they get the right level of support and supervision while they're learning the skills on the job. What we care about passionately in the academy is that the make do and mend just isn't good enough. The needs and the wishes of people who use social care services are so important to get right that we really have got to rethink our approach to training and development of the workforce or when I get a little older there won't be the right skills there for me and that's not what I want either. ROBINSON But what I'm getting at is that this can be an impossible circle to square if you're an employer. BERNARD There is evidence which points to the link between investing in training and development for your staff and having a reduced turnover. Good employers who manage, lead, inspire, look after their staff do have lower turnovers than those who maybe more cavalier about it. ROBINSON Let's look at your own budget then. You've got £3 million to spend over three years, which doesn't seem a lot when you bear in mind that there are 1.5 million social care workers, will you make much of an impact do you think? BERNARD There is money, of course, elsewhere in the system to support training. We expect to be able to bid for more funds to do more things but we won't be providing direct training, we'll be signposting, advising, guiding, hand holding - doing all the things that employers tell us, particularly small employers, they struggle to get advice and information on. ROBINSON There's a move away at the moment, isn't there, from elderly and disabled people receiving care from care homes and agencies towards them employing people that they have chosen in their own homes using direct payments or individual budgets, how can you improve the quality of the care workers who are employed directly by disabled people? BERNARD This will need a partnership between the academy and those micro employers, as they're sometimes called, small scale employers employing their own care. And we know that what micro employers want is a wider range of skills than were traditionally thought of as care skills and we want to make sure that we can provide really accessible forms of support for the learning needs that they have identified. ROBINSON Have you personally had to use what are now called care services in your own life and how have you found them? BERNARD I've done all sides of the social care work actually because I have worked as a care assistant myself and it's very hard work but hugely rewarding when you can make relationships with people. This was in a nursing home with older people. But I did myself - although I don't always talk about it - receive mental health services when I was a teenager. I succumbed, as is not unusual, as a teenager to quite severe depression, so I'm awfully well aware of what difference somebody taking an interest in you personally with the skills to give you the right support that you need at any one time, how much difference that makes to your ability to get on with your life, which is what most of us want. ROBINSON Inevitably this is an area which is impressionistic but what impression have you gained of the quality of what is on offer out there? BERNARD It's a lot better than when we started and I started in care about 40 years ago, that I can say for absolutely certain, having been working in care at that time, it's a lot better. We understand better the importance of individuals and how we respond to them, that's not to say it's perfect. ROBINSON In recent years there have been lots and lots of bodies who've in fact come on to this programme to do similar interviews to this one about how they're going to improve training and the skills of care workers. What difference will your new skills academy make from what is already being done and what is already there? BERNARD We will have to add value of course and make sure that we tie in, which we're already doing, with the other agencies and their programmes, so that we are doing that bit more. What no one is doing at the moment, for example, is helping people to choose from best practice by identifying it for them, so that will be a new addition to the things which are available at the moment. We don't register services, we don't register the workforce, we don't offer training and development, in fact skills academies are not supposed to offer training and development. So what will be new for us the hand holding bit. We care about you as employers, we care about how we can help you run the best business you possibly can so that people who use services get fabulous outcomes. ROBINSON Do you have any powers to make companies invest in training? BERNARD Sometimes I would really like to be able to but no I can't. We can only encourage, support, advise and guide. ROBINSON Why do you say sometimes you'd really like to? BERNARD Because of course I want to see everything getting better and there are times when it would be lovely to be able to say to thousands of employers you are all going to do this but that wouldn't work, would it, employers have got to want to do what's the right thing to do and we've got to get them excited enough about it for them to feel that we can help them do it. ROBINSON Jennifer Bernard, programme director of the new National Skills Academy for Social Care, it opens in April. It's going to receive £3 million over three years from the Learning and Skills Council. The Department of Health is throwing in £3 million also over three years, and social care employers are being asked to make an unspecified contribution but the academy is hoping to bring in about £6 million from them. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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