Archives: Courses

Mandatory training for childcare workers in registered early years settings in England, aligned to the Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework and Working Together to Safeguard Children. Each lesson links to official guidance, includes an illustration and ends with a short quiz. Awareness only: paediatric first aid needs an approved practical course.

Mandatory training for residential childcare support workers in England, aligned to the Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015 and its Quality Standards. Each lesson links to the official source documents. Awareness only: restraint, first aid and medication need practical accredited training.

Awareness-level infection prevention and control. Hand hygiene and PPE techniques need practical training and competency sign-off.

Awareness-level first aid knowledge. CPR and AED skills need an approved practical course; this course is not a first aid qualification.

General manual handling training for any worker, based on the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992. Safe lifting technique must be practically taught and observed.

Awareness-level knowledge for staff who help people move. Safe handling technique and equipment use must be taught and observed in person before anyone relies on you to do it for real.

Awareness-level knowledge for care workers who support people with medicines. Administering medication requires practical training and a competency sign-off from your employer; this course is underpinning knowledge, not a substitute.

This course walks through 23 statutory and mandatory training topics for care workers, grouped by who they apply to. Each lesson lists the key areas covered and the main learning points. It is an awareness-level overview: practical topics must be completed with accredited practical training.

This course is written for people who carry genuine leadership and management responsibility for medicines practice — registered managers, team leaders, deputy managers and senior staff with delegated oversight — across Domiciliary Care, Supported Living, Care Homes, Children’s Homes and Supported Accommodation. It is grounded in NICE guideline SC1 (Managing medicines in care homes), NICE guideline NG67 (Managing medicines for adults receiving social care in the community), the related quality standard QS171, and CQC Regulation 12, which requires medicines to be supplied, managed and administered safely.

Medicines support is one of the areas I have seen catch out even experienced, caring teams — not through carelessness, but through a genuine gap between what a manager assumes is happening and what is actually happening on the ground. Leadership and management are paramount throughout this course: roles and responsibilities are set out explicitly, and every lesson closes by naming specifically what you, as the person responsible, should be checking — through direct observation, spot-checks, supervision or audit — and how you evidence that checking for CQC. Across eighteen lessons, this course covers the legal and regulatory framework, the limits of a non-medical role, the presumption of self-administration and individual risk assessment, medicines policy, receiving and storing medicines, the six rights of supporting medicines, MAR charts, PRN medicines, controlled drugs, covert administration and the Mental Capacity Act, medicines in the community versus a care home or children’s home setting specifically, medication review, errors and a just culture, recognising adverse effects, and staff competency, compliance checking and ongoing assessment.

This course is written for people who carry genuine leadership and management responsibility for infection prevention and control practice — registered managers, team leaders, deputy managers and senior staff with delegated oversight — rather than for a registered nurse’s own clinical IPC training. It is grounded in the National Infection Prevention and Control Manual’s Standard Infection Control Precautions and Transmission-Based Precautions, UKHSA’s guidance on understanding and managing infection in adult social care, and CQC Regulation 12, which explicitly requires providers to prevent and control the spread of infection.

I have led more than one service through a seasonal outbreak, and the pattern is always the same: services where a manager has genuinely embedded, checked infection prevention habits weather it with a handful of cases; services where good practice only appears when someone is watching get hit far harder. Leadership and management are paramount throughout this course: roles and responsibilities are set out explicitly, and every lesson closes by naming specifically what you, as the person responsible, should be checking — through direct observation, spot-checks, supervision or audit — and how you evidence that checking for CQC. Across eighteen lessons, this course covers the legal framework, the chain of infection, the ten Standard Infection Control Precautions in full, hand hygiene, PPE, safe management of equipment, linen, spillages and waste, respiratory hygiene, transmission-based precautions, outbreak recognition and response, common infections across service types, antimicrobial resistance, staff occupational health, and audit, competency and compliance.