{"id":338550,"date":"2018-07-02T14:54:35","date_gmt":"2018-07-02T14:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.helpinghandshomecare.co.uk\/our-location\/birmingham\/blog\/home-cares-first-ever-centre-of-excellence\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T14:52:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T14:52:00","slug":"home-cares-first-ever-centre-of-excellence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.helpinghandshomecare.co.uk\/blog\/home-cares-first-ever-centre-of-excellence\/","title":{"rendered":"Home care\u2019s first ever Centre of Excellence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Centre<\/p>\n

Helping Hands was endorsed as a Centre of Excellence, making us the first and only full-service homecare provider<\/a> to receive such recognition. <\/strong><\/h2>\n

The accolade comes from Skills for Care, the strategic body for the adult social care<\/a> workforce in England, after they reviewed the overall training and induction programme for the 3,000 plus employees at Helping Hands.<\/p>\n

As an official mark of approval from the care industry, we are the only fully regulated home care company to be recognised for demonstrating excellence in four areas: showing a commitment to meeting the needs of our learners, complying with the social model of care, measuring how our training supports people in need of care and support, and finally how our training is directly linked to the Leadership Qualities Framework.<\/p>\n

The importance of quality carer training<\/h2>\n

Quality care in the home is only ever possible if carers are trained to the best standards and they’re fully supported in their roles. \u201cIt\u2019s the whole reason why we invest so much into our training programmes for carers,” explains our Head of Learning and Development. “It’s to ensure that our carers can develop the skills and know-how to feel confident in supporting someone at home.<\/p>\n

\"Moving\u201cEven if someone joins our team with previous experience of care, we still train them in the Helping Hands way,\u201d she adds. \u201cIt may be that our policies and procedures are different to the previous company they worked for. But it can also come through to the way of providing that care: we place a special focus on enabling independence and maintaining the customer\u2019s dignity at all times, and this shines through in our training.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Helping Hands live-in carer<\/a> training programme has been running for many years. As an intensive residential programme for all new recruits joining our team, it covers all the theory and practical skills needed to support someone to continue living in their own home. It\u2019s run by home care experts, and practically all of them have worked as carers themselves.<\/p>\n

One of the trainers at our main centre in Warwickshire, says, \u201cThe carers are so lucky to have the opportunity to undergo classroom based learning, it makes such a difference. It empowers the carers and gives them the confidence to deliver person-centred care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Domiciliary carer training and refreshers<\/h2>\n

Alongside in-house training for live-in carers<\/a>, we also deliver in-house training to every care assistant that joins our 155 branches to deliver domiciliary \u2013 or visiting care<\/a> \u2013 within their local communities.<\/p>\n

As with live-in carers, care assistants are provided with refresher training as and when it\u2019s needed, to either brush-up their skills or take them through any new policies or procedures required for their job<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"A\u201cOne of the major differences between us and other home care agencies<\/a> is that every one of our carers is directly employed by us, and therefore have continuous support after joining the team,\u201d says our Director of Operations. \u201cBesides, how could they do the role effectively without a network of support themselves?\u201d<\/p>\n

And this support comes in many forms, from a programme of refresher training, whether it\u2019s online or at a Helping Hands office, contact with their locally based line manager, assigned mentor and our 24\/7 carer helpline.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is always room for improvement, so we hold regular employee surveys to see what\u2019s working and what\u2019s not. It\u2019s so important to do this to make sure we\u2019re delivering the best service possible, to both our customers and our employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Intensive inductions for support teams<\/h2>\n

Almost a third of employees at Helping Hands are managers, coordinators, clinical experts and other office-based support teams. Joining such a large team \u2013 spread across all corners of England and Wales and with many different services \u2013 it’s important that everyone has a proper induction plan.<\/p>\n

This induction, for many managers and office-based teams, involves completing the live-in carer training themselves. Other inductions are also offered, including a detailed overview of how each department works and an introduction to our nurse-led clinical care service.<\/p>\n

\"MyLori Barber-Field, who represents Skills for Care, shares what led to the endorsement being awarded. \u201cHelping Hands demonstrates dedicated commitment to our core requirements such as effective leadership and management, robust compliance procedures, ensuring staff development is based on equality of opportunity, and finally that working with learners is a central feature of all learning and development.\u201d<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re so proud that our training and induction has been recognised by Skills for Care and that we\u2019ve become an official Centre of Excellence. It\u2019s a huge accolade which reflects our commitment to meeting the needs of learners and the efforts we make to ensure that our learning and development programmes positively impact the lives of our customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Helping Hands\u2019 Chairman, Tim Lee, shares, \u201cWe just wouldn\u2019t be where we are today without the dedication, commitment and quality of our employees, and the grounding for this is in our training.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Helping Hands was endorsed as a Centre of Excellence, making us the first and only full-service homecare provider to receive such recognition. The accolade comes from Skills for Care, the strategic body for the adult social care workforce in England, after they reviewed the overall training and induction programme for the 3,000 plus employees at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":320436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-post-hh.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","_glsr_average":0,"_glsr_ranking":0,"_glsr_reviews":0,"medium_featured_image":0,"small_featured_image":0,"extra_small_featured_image":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-338550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-news","category-working-at-helping-hands"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHome Care's First Ever Centre of Excellence | The Helping Hands<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Our learning and development programme is endorsed by Skills for Care, 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