Monthly Archives: August 2016

Join us at Food Safety: Guide to Compliance and Best Practice in the Catering Industry

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Next month Highfield will be hosting a specialised food safety event to support the launch of the British Hospitality Association’s revised publication of the Industry Guide to Good Hygiene Practice: Catering.

This event will focus on key updates contained within the guide, provide knowledge and understanding of current issues and trends within the sector, and also feature presentations from food safety experts including Euan MacAuslan.

Euan MacAuslan

Euan speaking at our National Conference 2014

Euan began his environmental health career in the army in 1978. On his departure he built on his existing knowledge and expertise with a breadth of consultancy work until he joined The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Since 1992, he has been managing the council’s public health training services, and is also a level 4 food safety examiner with qualified teacher learning and skills status. Euan has been a key contributor to Highfield for over 14 years, and has assisted in the development of publications, qualifications and training. He has also spoken about best practice food safety at several industry events throughout his career.

We are pleased to welcome Euan back to speak at our conference, where he will be delivering a presentation focused on the major updates contained within the industry guide. Further information regarding the food safety event is available here .

To book yourself and/or your colleagues on to this event, please visit here . Alternatively, you can secure your place by calling our Sales team on 01302 363277/0845 226 0350 or by emailing the Events team at events@highfieldabc.net .

Government publishes new guidance on the apprenticeship levy

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The government has released further guidance on the new apprenticeship levy, providing a clearer understanding of how it will be funded, and the role employers and training providers will play.

From 6 April 2017, all UK employers that have an annual pay bill of over £3 million will be required to pay an apprenticeship levy to invest in apprenticeships. The funding will support people of all ages to gain high-quality skills and experience and help employers to offer more training opportunities and build a skilled workforce.

Here are the key points from the proposals today:

  • Employers that are too small to pay the levy will have to pay 10% of the training costs, with the remaining 90% paid by the government.
  • Employers with less than 50 employees will not have to pay towards the training costs of 16 to 18-year-old apprentices, which will be 100% met by the government.
  • Employers who take on a 16 to 18-year-old apprentice will receive an additional £1,000.
  • Employers and training providers who take on 16 to 18-year-olds or young care leavers with an education, health and care (EHC) plan will receive additional funding.
  • Employers will be able to use levy funds to retrain workers in new skills, even if they have prior qualifications.
  • Employers subject to the apprenticeship levy, who want to spend more on training than is in their digital account, will see 90% of their additional apprenticeship training costs funded by the government.
  • From April 2017, a register of training providers will be available to improve the link between training providers and employers. The proposed funding system will consist of 15 bands, each with an upper limit and which will range from £1,500 to £27,000. 50% of each apprenticeship programme must be delivered by a training provider.
  • Employers who are also training providers will be subject to Ofsted regulations.
  • Providers who have an Ofsted rating of grade 4 will be unable to provide apprenticeships.
  • Apprenticeship providers will no longer be rewarded with a double payment for each apprenticeship start.
  • The success payment (paid upon successful completion of an apprenticeship) will be replaced with a 20% completion payment, regardless of the final grade.
  • Apprenticeships will be available to everybody over the age of 16 at all levels.
  • Training providers who have apprentices enrolled on programmes that do not receive approval on the new register of apprentice assessment organisations will have their learners transferred to another provider. This is currently under consultation.

To help employers see how the levy and funding system would impact them, the government has also created a new online calculator, which is available here .  This easy-to-use tool will allow employers to understand how much they will have to pay and how they could use their digital funds to pay for future training.

A consultation on the plans is now open, and will close on 5 September 2016. Employers and training providers are invited to have their say on the initial funding proposals to try to ensure that the final plans fully meet the needs of all those involved in the apprenticeship programme. If you would like to take part in the consultation, please click here .

The final proposal on the apprenticeship levy is due to be confirmed in October 2016.

The apprenticeship levy funding proposal is available here ; additional guidance on the levy can also be viewed here .

Value of Leadership and Management within Healthcare Settings

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In this article, Highfield’s subject matter expert for health and social care, Maddy Thomson, highlights the benefits of leadership and management training within healthcare settings.

High-quality care and skilled and qualified leaders and managers go hand-in-hand. In adult care, managers are not only responsible for the service provided to those who receive care and support, but also for supporting a team and influencing the quality of care across a service or organisation. Good leadership and management can transform an organisation, while underdeveloped leaders and managers who lack confidence can destroy it. So it’s important that leaders and managers have the opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills.

Social care organisations also need to develop strong leaders and managers to meet the challenges ahead amid the growing complexity of the social care sector. Adult social care faces challenges due to demographic changes and cultural change to innovate to provide individualised person-centred care across a wide spectrum of diverse needs. Dynamic and well-trained leaders and managers can be the catalysts for the changes that need to happen and provide the best response to the market place in a continued environment of efficiency drives.

The State of the Adult Social Care Sector and Workforce in England 2015 report estimated that managerial and supervisory roles accounted for 7% of jobs, approximately 115,000. This group included senior managers, middle managers, line managers, registered managers and other managerial roles not directly involved in providing care. The figure specifically for registered managers, who need the skills and ability to manage and prepare for CQC inspections, was 22,500.  Numbers are set to increase as demand for social care services continues to grow, and a clear qualification route for progression will be an important mechanism to support employers in growing the future managers they need.

However, career progression in adult social care is often thought to be problematic.  One key factor is the intrinsic difference in the nature of management roles as opposed to care and support work. Team members with excellent care and support skills at level 3 are primary candidates for promotion into management but many find themselves unprepared for the very different set of knowledge and skills required.  These diverse skills are reflected in the different focus of the Level 5 Diploma in Leadership for Health and Social Care and Children and Young People’s Services as compared with the Level 3 Diploma in Health and Social Care. Many employers report that the gap between these is too great for learners and it presents a barrier to progression.

Employers have continued to call attention to the absence of this route direct from level 3 into management, which is the most common progression path. A new qualification is now being developed – the Level 4 Certificate in Principles of Leadership and Management for Adult Care. The purpose of the qualification is to provide a progression route into management roles in social care settings from a variety of starting points. It will also serve as an induction route for managers new in their post, ensuring that the Manager Induction Standards can be achieved in the context of accredited learning and assessment.

The qualification will be knowledge only, to allow as broad an audience as possible to achieve it including those who are not yet in management roles.

Skills for Care, which has initiated the development, will liaise with CQC to ensure the proposed qualification is understood as a recommended development route for new managers.

By providing progression into the management role, the qualification will aid career development from care and support into management, and from non-social care degrees into social care management.

The qualification will map closely to both Skills for Care’s Manager Induction Standards (as revised 2015) and to the successor qualification to the QCF Level 5 Diploma in Leadership for Health and Social Care and Children and Young People’s Services that is planned. It will therefore offer an aligned route into the key competence qualification for social care management and support managers in meeting CQC’s expectations for workforce development.

The new qualification is available in England only and likely to be eligible for funding through the Workforce Development Fund administered through Skills for Care. Highfield has been involved since the planning stages and has participated in the development of the qualification, which will be available later this year

Sources – Skills for Care