A social care and early years workforce that’s suitably qualified, knowledgeable and skilled with the right values, behaviours and practice

With 61,000 people on the register we are able to report on the qualifications that care workers have to do their roles. We provide data and report on the data from the qualifications based register which care workers need to have specific qualifications depending on their job role.

We are committed to providing open access to social care data in Wales. The data from our Register is included in our National Social Care Data Portal for Wales which brings together data from different sources to help build a picture of social care and support across Wales.

Apprenticeships offer a way to gain training, develop new skills and qualifications whilst people work and earn. The details of all social care or early years and child care apprenticeship frameworks are available on the Apprenticeship Certification Wales (ACW) website. Our role is to help check evidence to make sure it meets the required standards. We then send certificates to learning providers who then award the apprenticeship to their learners.

3,270 people completed apprenticeships in childcare, play, learning and development or health and social care in 2023 to 2024: 

• 880 completed a childcare, play, learning and development apprenticeship

• 2,390 completed a health and social care apprenticeship.

Our data suggests that around 29% of the social care workforce in Wales can understand Welsh to some degree and we continue to look at ways we can support the workforce using Welsh at work.

This year 474 people working in social care enrolled on our Camau course for beginners, in partnership with the National Centre for Learning Welsh. The free course, which takes 60 hours to complete, offers bitesize, flexible learning that focuses on the Welsh words and phrases workers are most likely to need when they’re communicating with the people they support.

In November, we published the National safeguarding learning, development and training framework for professionals who work with vulnerable children and adults.

The framework was created in partnership with colleagues from across social services, social care, education, health and the emergency services in Wales, and sets out standards for the amount and types of safeguarding training professionals need.

The standards were the first of their kind in Wales and aim to make sure that professionals across Wales have consistent levels and types of safeguarding training.

We have oversight of a number of social care management and leadership programmes:

• compassionate and collective leadership programme, to enhance leadership qualities among senior leaders in the social care sector – 87% of those who completed the programme were satisfied it met their needs

• middle managers programme helps aspiring middle managers better understand and prepare for moving into these roles, and supports succession planning

• the statutory directors, – 8 people joined the new cohort for 2023 to 2024

We will continue to evaluate the programmes, so we can keep improving, developing and building on the training provided.

We’ve set up communities to support people in the sector to build networks, work together and learn from each other, these include:

• 50 members in place-based care community

• 15 members in new models of residential care community

• 168 members in the evidence community

• 148 members in the Responsible Individuals community

We want the communities to be a secure place for members, where they can feel safe exploring topics that are important to them. With the community behind them, members know they can share ideas, ask questions and get support.

What communities of practice members have to say about them: