Terminology
 

Throughout this page:

• ‘care practitioner’ refers to a person of any level working within Care
• ‘service user’ refers to anyone who uses social care services either privately or through a statutory body
• ‘the standards’ refers to the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) standards
• ‘we’ or ‘us’ refers to the Care Professional Standards Academy (The Academy)
• ‘you’ or ‘your’ refers to a care practitioner who joins the Care Professional Standards Academy as an Affiliate

All Affiliates must meet our standards for continuing professional development.

We will work with Affiliates to support you in meeting our standards.

CPD and Affiliation
 

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) describes a learning activity that you undertake to enhance your skills and help you to develop in your area of work.

Affiliates of the Care Professional Standards Academy will be expected to engage with learning, such as training workshops, conferences and events, some distance learning and e-learning programs may be considered as part of your CPD however face to face training will gain you more points within The Care Academy structure.

Meeting the Care Academy CPD Standards
 

You must engage in regular CPD and keep a record of what you do by logging your training details on your own CPD portal.

CPD standard

CPD is linked to your Affiliation with the Care Professional Standards Academy, so you need to meet our CPD standards year on year to remain as an Affiliate.

As an Academy Affiliate, you should work by these standards:

1. Maintain a continuous, up-to-date and accurate record of your CPD activities by regularly using your online portal
2. Seek to ensure that your CPD has contributed to the quality of your practice and service delivery and benefits the service user
3. Recognise, value and apply all lifelong learning opportunities
4. Provide the Academy Staff and your employer with honest and up-to-date information about your learning and development

The number of points will be based on an internal algorithm and will look at the following:

• Is the learning approved by the Academy? The reason for this is that we want to monitor the quality of training given to care staff. If the training is not approved, it will still accrue some credits, but not as many as approved training. If you would like to find out about training being ‘approved’ please email info@www.careprofessional.co.uk
• Is the learning linked to an external awarding body for which you receive a full (or part of a) qualification?
• What level is the learning?
• How many hours have been spent directly on the training course?
• Is the training face-to-face, distance learning, or e-learning?

How does the Academy recognise self-study?

As an Affiliate you will be able to log onto the SCILS website for free. This will take you to a number of individual learning activities, you will need to download the workbook, complete the answers and then if you choose to submit these to HCPA for assessing it will be marked and will gain you points.

Please note: there is a fee of £20 per assessment which will include one formative and one summative assessment. This will need to be paid in advance of receiving the final assessment. As an Affiliate you can access the learning for free at any time, however, it will only count as approved CPD if you have the work assessed by a HCPA registered assessor. Your employer may choose to have their own internal assessors approved and this will then not incur a charge from HCPA, the employer has a right to make the £20 charge if they choose to.

The role of employers
 

The Care Professional Standards Academy works with individual social care practitioners and does not have any role in regulating employers.

This means, these CPD standards are a personal responsibility that all affiliates have to meet to stay affiliated to us. We do work with employers to urge them to ask their staff to sign up to The Care Academy as we feel it is a mark of a quality provider who encourages life-long learning and supports staff in their professional standards of development.

We will regularly communicate with employers to make sure they are aware of the Academy and what it means for them.

CPD and annual renewal
 

Your CPD is linked to affiliation and you will need to renew your affiliation each year.

You will notice that there is an expiry date on your membership card and you will be issued with a new card each year so long as you can prove that you have engaged in at least one piece of training or CPD activity related to social care.

Our standards for CPD are designed to prove that you continue to learn and develop so that you can work to the best practice standards and are for the benefit of you and people who use the services you work in.