This toolkit will enable you to build and improve your workplace culture so that it is a positive, compassionate, collaborative, and inclusive environment for people to work at, and where people drawing on care and support experience high quality care.

This introductory three-week course from The King’s Fund is for anyone working in or interested in health and social care in its broadest sense, regardless of experience or role. It’s designed to introduce you to some of the foundations of leadership, kindness, and compassion. You’ll explore why these qualities matter now more than ever, and how to develop your personal practice of kind and compassionate leadership.

Develop your understanding of how to lead with compassion and kindness within the health and social care sectors.

This course is designed to help you develop the skills needed to reflect on your working life and contribute even more effectively to the strategic direction of your organisation. By improving your own sense of purpose, you can identify ways to promote an engaging, forward-looking culture within your organisation that supports purpose-led approaches to work related problems.

Skills for Care hosts local and national events and networks to support the adult social care sector with their workforce development needs.

Search for events in your local area by region and by topic. If you’re looking for network event in your area and can’t find it on the listing below, please contact your locality manager.

Here you can find resources which introduce fundamentals of health and care. Our first learning opportunity is RESTORE2 Training as provided by Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB.

It’s important to continually respond to and learn from what is going well, and what isn’t going so well. This enables you to make improvements to your service and offer that benefit everyone – especially those accessing care and support.

The Manager Induction Standards (MIS) set out what a manager needs to know and understand to perform well in their role.

Leaders and managers are important to the success of any organisation. That’s why the effective induction of managers needs to be a key focus, so they start off on the right step and in the right direction.

Skills for Care has reviewed the Manager Induction Standards (2023) so you can use them to support this process. 

Registered managers have a fundamental role in promoting person-centred support in their services. Working in a person-centred way leads to positive outcomes for people who need care and support, and the registered manager creates the culture of a service where people are treated with dignity and offered support that is relevant to their individual needs.

Every workplace has its own culture. This is the character and personality of the workplace and it can affect the behaviour and attitudes of employees and those receiving care. This CPD module helps managers to explore the links between vision, values, and culture. It also provides practical tools and techniques that can be used in the day-to-day management of a care environment.This CPD module will help managers to explore the critical links between vision, values and culture, providing practical support to influence change and develop the culture of their service.

Critical review tool to help social care leaders move towards a strengths-based, whole-place approach

This critical review tool is for leaders and practitioners working in local authorities and partner organisations and people who draw on support to assess their ambitions, strengths, and development areas in relation to developing strengths-based care and support across a local place.

Recruitment support

Valuable people

This innovative programme is designed to give you the skills and knowledge you need to attract and develop a skilled and confident workforce. It covers digital and practical skills, values based interviewing and how to have valuable conversations, as well as one-to-one support. The programme can be commissioned by local authorities. It also includes a personalised data retention report based on your pay and training metrics to provide tailored analysis, from which we can offer recommendations specific to your organisation.

A previous attendee said: “I found the programme really useful. An excellent insight about improving our online presence and being more visible. The 1:1 support was helpful in analysing our practice and explore ways forward.”

This Value Based Interviewing Skills course is for all staff who have responsibility of recruiting and managing teams. The course supports staff to have a clear understanding of their role in the interview process and supports evidenced based approach to gaining responses.This interview skills course covers the practical skills required in carrying out values-based recruitment to ensure the process is productive and focused to the service needs and meets the values and ethos of the organisation. It covers the different stages of the recruitment process as well as how to conduct an interview effectively to ensure that delegates are able to choose the most appropriate person for the job.

When we are motivated by compassion and wisdom, the results of our actions benefit everyone, not just our individual selves or some immediate convenience.

For leadership to be compassionate, it must also be inclusive. Compassion blurs the boundaries between self and other, promoting belonging, trust, understanding, mutual support and, by definition, inclusion (West 2021). This creates an inclusive, psychologically safe environment in which diversity in all forms is valued and team members can contribute creatively and enthusiastically to team performance.