Information Bank

Training Options for Health and Social Care SVQs

Options for Community Care Providers

There are several options for Community Care Providers to train staff to the registration level. Which option providers use will depend on the size of the organisation, funding available and the number of staff needing qualifications. Some organisations are linking all internal training to SVQ (Scottish Vocational Qualifications) units, so staff can progress to other qualifications.

External: Use external training providers who will provide workplace assessors and verifiers e.g. Colleges.
Internal: Register your organisation as a approved training centre with SQA (Scottish Qualifications Authority) so you can provide training and assessment directly to staff. This requires having staff trained as workplace assessors and verifiers, and using external verifiers. SQA can provide more information on this, see their Guide to Approval For Training Providers & Employers.
Combination: Use a SQA registered centre to train assessors and internal verifiers from your organisation. Then your own staff are your workplace assessors, but work under the registered centre. The registered centre provides external verifiers. For example ARC Scotland work with providers to do this.

SVQs are primarily assessment tools, not training programmes. Some people may only need minimal training before being assessed but they will need to provide evidence of competence. If you are using internal assessors then staff will need the underpinning knowledge before being assessed. Recognition of prior learning can be incorporated see http://www.scqf.org.uk/rpl.asp for more information.

Training Costs and Considerations

When considering training it is important to consider the full cost. Depending on which route you take direct training costs may include;

SQA approval fees
Registration and certification fees for each candidate
Assessment & Verification costs

Indirect costs:

Human and physical resources for training and development.
Training for assessors / verifiers.
Work time taken by candidates while studying.
Work time take be SQA liaison person.
Candidate replacement costs.

Other things to consider

Will staff contribute to the cost of their training?
Will the employer contribution to training costs be conditional on success or remaining with the organisation?
Will part time staff have to pay some of the training costs or spend more of their own time studying?
Will staff study and prepare for assessments at work or in their own time?
Will staff receive salary increases or additional responsibilities after completing qualifications?
If staff leave during training or soon after completion will they be required to pay back some of the training costs? (To make provision for this please seek legal advice.)
If staff fail or take longer to achieve their qualifications who will pays for the additional fees and time?
Will staff need additional support around literacy issues before beginning training? (See Literacy Support)
What barriers are there to staff beginning training?
Do staff have a training budget and a number of release days for Continuing Professional Development? (Phase One registrants are required to complete 5 days or 90 hours of CPD before re-registration in three years.)

Training Resources

An overview of SVQs and underpinning knowledge for some core units are available free online from http://www.candovq.org/.
Core Skills Course (Communication) free to download from SIRCC http://www.sircc.strath.ac.uk. Contains all the material needed to deliver a five day course to your target groups.
Open learning packs for HNC Social Care optional units can be purchased from SQA http://www.sqa.org.uk/. Each candidate requires 1 or 2 credits from this group. £17 each pack.
4-Learning Care have produced distance learning packs of underpinning knowledge for Health and Social Care SVQ2 - SVQ4. http://www.4-Learning.co.uk/ available for purchase.