Health and Social Care Support Worker Training and Career Pathways

The development of more structured career pathways for support workers is one of the aims of this project.

The Health and Social Care Support Worker role will require support workers to achieve competencies in areas most relevant to their particular area of work through the National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) Framework at level 3. In addition to this a Health and Social Care Support Worker will need to complete an accredited qualification in Health and Social Care Support Work at level 3 (for example, a technical certificate). It is likely that depending on where individual Health and Social Care Support Workers are employed, that there will be a need to develop additional learning support packages to ensure that the particular skills needed to support different client groups are developed to a high standard.

It is hoped that the development of the Health and Social Care Support Worker training will complement other local support worker role developments that are currently being planned. In other areas these types of roles have been called Health and Social Care Assistant Practitioner roles. More information will be available locally in due course.

So, in the near future, it is hoped that career progression for support workers will be:

		Support Worker (NVQ level 2)
Client Group Specialisation		Health and Social Care Support Workers (NVQ level 3)		Client Group Specialisation
		Health and Social Care Assistant Practitioner (band 4 Agenda 4 Change development currently under discussion locally)
		Health and Social Care professional entry (e.g. Social Worker or Nurse training)