Care Certificate

The Care Certificate (PDF only, 680KB) is an identified set of standards that health and care professionals adhere to in their daily working life. Designed with the non-regulated workforce in mind, the Care Certificate gives everyone the confidence that health and care professionals have the same introductory skills, knowledge and behaviours to provide compassionate, safe and high-quality care and support in their own particular workplace setting.

The Care Certificate is based on 16 standards, which individuals need to complete in full before they can be awarded their certificate. 

Care Certificate Review 2025

We are working with Skills for care, DHSC and our colleagues within NHS England to update the digital resources including the elearning as quickly as we can. For now, please continue using the existing resources. Once the digital resources have been updated and the new 16th standard elearning launched, we will inform all learners.

The Care Certificate is a set of standards developed for the health and care support workforce, to support their induction and development. The Care Certificate provides a framework to ensure that all support workers have the same introductory skills, knowledge and behaviours to provide compassionate, safe and high-quality care, in their workplace settings.

The Care Certificate consists of 16 standards that require both theoretical study and practical application within the learner’s place of work. All elements of the standards must be completed and assessed before certificates are awarded.

This programme of elearning has been developed to support the theoretical component of each standard of the Care Certificate. It is freely available to access for staff in the health and care sectors. The elearning programme is based on the Care Certificate workbook, which was developed by Health Education England, Skills for Care and Skills for Health.

There are additional elearning sessions and resources to support specific care settings and to support assessors in the practice of assessing learners in their place of work.

e-LFH Care Certificate Programme Resources (link)

Care Certificate Leads National Network

The Care Certificate Leads bi-monthly is a chance to be part of a collective group made up of everything associated with the Care Certificate, from recruitment to completion and everything in between. It has a powerful presence in terms of bringing like-minded people together to consult, share and network.

If you would like to join the network, you can find additional information (Word document only, 116KB).

To access the expansive range of resources and discussions around the Care Certificate please request to join the NHS Futures Care Certificate platform Care Certificate Network - FutureNHS Collaboration Platform.

Allied Health Professions (AHP) Communications Resource Pack

Support Workers can now access scenarios set within inpatient rehabilitation and critical care workplaces, supporting them to apply the Care Certificate principles. To help organisations to communicate this to Support Workers a useful communications resource pack has been produced. To view the pack visit: Communications Resource Pack (Word document only, 1MB). 

Support Worker Learning and Development Roadmap

The support worker learning and development roadmap (referred to as "the roadmap" from now on) has been designed to be a useful resource for support workers, educators, clinical leads, managers and HR colleagues.

The roadmap has been developed with input from a broad range of colleagues including Allied Health Professional (AHP) Support Workers, Maternity Support Workers (MSWs) and Healthcare Support Workers (HCSWs), Educators, Line Managers, HR colleagues and Workforce Leads. Contributions were also sought from the HCSW Voice network, Care Certificate Leads network and Educator Community of Practice.

The roadmap has been designed to be used alongside trust specific training and tools, for more information, visit: Support Worker learning and development Roadmap.

Care Quality Commission (CQC)

The CQC updated its position statement regarding the Care Certificate on 5^th December 2022, which states that it continues to support and expect to see the Care Certificate being used by providers across Health and Social Care.

When the CQC started to use its new assessment framework, this will continue to be a key area of interest and focus. This is particularly under the safe key question when exploring the new quality statement on safe and effective staffing.

Read the full statement.

Higher Development Award

Health Education England continues to engage with employers and colleges across the country, providing support to structure the Higher Development Award in different areas. The HDA is a personal development programme for Support Workers which enables clinical and non-clinical Support Workers from all sectors to, “Be the best and acknowledge potential”. View the HDA document (Word document only, 52KB).

To find out more about the programme and join the national network please e mail Higher Development Award higherdevelopmentaward@hee.nhs.uk

The Higher Development Award has an expansive range of resources so you can find out more about the programme, its place within your Support Worker pathway and look at how other areas have developed the staff for their areas. By joining the NHS Futures platform Higher Development Award - FutureNHS Collaboration Platform you will have access to the full range of guidance.

Learner Film

The following film was recorded during the initial three cohorts of the Higher Development Award and reflects some of what the programme will represent in terms of building confidence, addressing functional skills, helping people to understand how important they are and finally the understanding the service improvement project which takes the learning back to the workplace - view the film visit on our youtube channel.