Technical Skills

Contents

Resources for developing your technical skills

Other eLearning courses

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For support workers, technical skills are likely to be clinical skills that enable you to undertake a broader range of activities linked to patient care, in your day-to-day role. Once you have completed the Care Certificate and your induction, you might want to continue developing your technical skills to gain knowledge, maintain your competency to the highest level possible and stay up to date with current clinical practice. 

A range of free eLearning modules are available to support you and you can access these in addition to the face-to-face, simulated or work-based training that is often available through your employer. 

Resources for developing your technical skills

The Care Certificate

• Care Certificate  - The Care Certificate 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 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 workplace setting. The Care Certificate is based on 15 standards, which individuals need to complete in full before they can be awarded their certificate. It has been included within the Maternity Support Worker Competency, Education and Career Framework and also aligned to the Level 3 Maternity Apprenticeship. The certificate is being updated in collaboration with the National team to include AHP support workers relevant topic areas. Once these have been produced, we will include a link here.
• As part of the Care Certificate celebration week, NHS England ran a webinar outlining the history, useful resources, and great case studies. You can find a copy of the slides and a recording of the webinar here: HCSW Programme 22/23: Care Certificate Webinar - Healthcare Support Worker Programme - FutureNHS Collaboration Platform
• The London Regional Team have created this great video about the Care Certificate: Care Certificate - Healthcare Support Worker Programme - FutureNHS Collaboration Platform
• Health Education England and eLearning for Health have also created an informative video which you can find here: The Care Certificate - Animation on Vimeo
• If you are responsible for the Care Certificate within your organisation, or interested in good practice in this space, join our Care Certificate Leads meeting. To join, please email:  carecertificate@hee.nhs.uk.

eLearning for Healthcare modules

Support Workers may find the following eLearning for healthcare courses helpful:

• eLearning for healthcare  - Health Education England’s eLearning for healthcare website provides over 400 eLearning programmes for the health and care workforce in collaboration with organisations including Royal Colleges, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England and NHS Improvement. You can visit the registration page.
• Autism Awareness - This course upskills health and care workers on what it’s like to experience autism, how to make services accessible for autistic people and how to adapt your behaviour to communicate effectively and respectfully to improve the experience of people who access your services. 
• Children and Young People with Mental Health Needs, Autism or Learning Disability – This programme is designed to help staff from all professions enhance their confidence and skills to care for children and young people with mental health needs and their families or carers.
• Communicating with Empathy - This course has been developed to promote sensitive and effective communication in end-of-life care.
• Helping People Living in Cold Homes - This eLearning module is suitable for staff who visit patients, service users or customers in their homes.
• Continence and Catheter Care -The programme is aimed at nursing staff and healthcare assistants across all settings. It aims to improve knowledge and awareness of all aspects of continence and catheter care and describes the different types of incontinence and the therapies and treatments that can be offered to patients.     
• COVID-19 Recovery and Rehabilitation - This interactive eLearning resource was created to support health and care staff, including allied health professionals, exercise professionals and carers working with people recovering from COVID-19.
• Dementia - This eLearning programme in dementia care has been designed to enhance the training and education of the health and social care workforce. It focuses on the essential knowledge and skills needed to support and enable people living with dementia and their family carers to live as well as possible, wherever they live. This training follows the Dementia Training Standards Framework and sessions address tiers 1, 2 and 3 of the Framework.
• The Lived Experience of Dementia - This programme is aimed at all staff working in health and social care settings, providing a unique insight into the lived experience of dementia, increasing knowledge and understanding of the condition. It covers some of the learning outcomes from the Dementia Training Standards Framework and can support other learning materials covering tier 2 standards.
• Domestic Violence and Abuse – This programme supports health visitors who have safeguarding obligations, underpinning statutory guidance for those professionals.
• Dysphagia - This eLearning is relevant to health and social care staff, informal carers, and can be helpful to people with dysphagia themselves.   
• End-of-Life Care for All  - This programme includes a specific learning path aimed at support workers to help them provide high-quality end-of-life care.
• Essentials in Care - This course consists of three short eLearning sessions designed to give frontline staff in domiciliary, community, residential and nursing home settings essential knowledge in providing high-quality care.
• Essentials in Wound Care for the Health and Care Workforce - This eLearning programme aims to support the health and care workforce in developing the knowledge and skills required to enable appropriate wound care to people in any setting.     
• Hydration in Older People - This programme has been designed to increase your knowledge and confidence in assessing an older person’s hydration needs and minimising their risk of poor hydration in a person-centred way. Aimed at any person working with older people in the community, including care home staff, home carers, family carers and volunteers, the eLearning builds on the information and skills you may have already learnt and implemented from the Care Certificate.
• The Hydration at Home programme from Wessex Academic Science Network provides additional learning resources to support you in developing your competencies around hydration at home for older people.
• Internet Safety, Suicide and Self-Harm – This course is relevant to anyone who provides support around suicide and self-harm, helping to guide conversations to assist anyone in staying safe and having positive experiences online.
• Long Covid – This programme introduces long Covid, starting with a definition, common symptoms, investigations and the impact on people with long Covid.
• Menopause Awareness – This course is designed for all colleagues in the workforce, granting an overview of what the menopause is, the common symptoms associated with it, and scenarios which will help our people better understand the ways in which they can help support themselves and each other.
• Mental Health Training Resources – This selection of resources provides a broad spectrum of frameworks and competences to assess mental health and learning disability.
• NHS at Home - This eLearning provides an overview of pulse oximetry for carers, including how to take the measurements and how to tell colleagues if they are worried.
• NHS Patient Safety Syllabus – The programme includes a patient safety syllabus and training programme for the whole of the NHS, designed to help everyone who works in the NHS take all the necessary steps to ensure our patients are safe while they are in our care.
• Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism - The e-Learning for Health training is named after Oliver McGowan. Oliver was a young man whose death shone a light on the need for health and social care staff to have better skills, knowledge and understanding of the needs for autistic people and people with a learning disability.
• Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare – This programme supports a range of healthcare professionals to gain the necessary knowledge to successfully support patients with their SRH needs.
• Stroke – This programme provides a broad spectrum of stroke care across the entire pathway, with a Stroke Toolkit, elements on Stroke Rehabilitation and Care, and Stroke Rehabilitation for the Non-Registered Workforce.

Other eLearning courses

• Primary Care Courses - These courses help Support Workers working in a primary care setting to develop the necessary skills to support patients and deliver high-quality care. Courses include asthma and COPD, chaperoning and a certificate for Higher Education in primary care.
• Skills Platform - This platform draws together high-quality training and consultancy opportunities. People can search the platform to find the best training to meet their needs and make contact with their chosen provider to discuss their training options. Some providers also offer bespoke training packages. Some of these courses have a cost attached to them, so you might want to discuss how they would help you improve and develop in your role with your manager or employer. 

Undertaking these eLearning modules might spark your interest in a particular area. If you are interested in developing in a specific area of practice, you can find more information on development roles (also known as ‘link’ roles) in the Personal skills section of this roadmap.