Apprenticeships

If you are aged 16 or over and want to work in social care or early years and childcare, an apprenticeship is a good place to start.

Apprenticeships offer a way to gain training, develop new skills and qualifications whilst you work and earn.

Apprentices are paid, like other employees. Their salary will depend on their age, experience, skills and ability.

Apprenticeships are a mix of vocational qualifications and essential skills (which include literacy and numeracy and in some apprenticeships an optional choice of digital skills) which you can achieve when you are working in either social care or early years and child care.

There are apprenticeships available at levels 2,3,4 and 5.

There are no formal entry requirements for these apprenticeships but you would need to be in a relevant role that matches the level of the apprenticeship you are undertaking.

Completing an apprenticeships varies so it is difficult to give exact times for completion so the following is just a guide:

• Level 2 Apprenticeships should take around 12 months
• Level 3 Apprenticeships 12 to 18 months
• Level 4 and 5 apprenticeships should take between 18 months to 30 months.

You will be given an Individual Apprenticeship Plan to assess the time it will take for you to complete your apprenticeship which will look at:

• what you already know
• qualifications you already have
• experience you have in social care or early years and child care
• support you may need.

Find out about roles within the social care and the early years and childcare sectors.

Visit Careers Wales for more information on how to access an apprenticeship to meet your needs.

When we develop new apprenticeships or review existing ones, we consult employers to help us identify the skills needed in the workforce.

Our role is to make sure that all apprenticeships follow the Specification of Apprenticeship Standards in Wales.

Employers will be responsible for:

• recruiting an apprentice (a training provider may help with this)
• ensuring pre-employment checks are in place including Disclosure and Barring Service checks see the Government's guidance
• paying an employed apprentice
• providing a suitable learning experience, see our useful work placement guide
• training the apprentice
• making sure the apprentice has time for learning
• reviewing the apprentice’s progress.

Apprentices are given salaries, like other employees. Their salary will depend on their age, experience, skills and ability.

Business Wales provides information to employers on:

• recruiting an apprentice
• how to advertise a vacancy suitable for an apprentice
• funding available to support you when employing an apprentice.

The details of the various frameworks for social care or early years and child care, outlining the qualification and essential skills requirements for each of the apprenticeships are available below:

• Level 2 and 3 in health and social care
• Level 4 and 5 in health and social care
• Level 2 and 3 in early years and child care
• Level 4 and 5 in early years and child care.

The details of all social care or early years and child care apprenticeship frameworks are available on the Apprenticeship Certification Wales (ACW) website.

Learning providers can register their centre with ACW. Following successful completion of registration, you will receive a confirmation email from us.

ACW makes it possible for training providers to:

• apply for apprenticeship certificates
• meet the rules and quality assurance requirements.

Our role at Social Care Wales 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.

There are three evidence checklists for learning providers to use whilst certifying apprenticeships on ACW. They are for frameworks in:

Contact us if you have any queries relating to the Evidence Checklist or proxy qualifications.

Apprenticeship Certificates Wales (ACW) is managed by the Federation of Industry Sector Skills and Standards and not by Social Care Wales.

To create an online account:

• register your Centre on ACW
• add your details
• select ‘Social Care Wales’ from the ‘related body’ menu
• ACW will prompt us to provide you with a login. We aim to activate login requests within 3 working days
• an email will be sent to you with your username and password.

Please note: we do not issue separate ACW logins for different frameworks. The admin login will allow you to create 5 individual usernames and passwords for staff within your organisation.

More information on how to use ACW visit the ACW website. For further guidance contact ACW directly on acw@fisss.org or by phone on 0300 303 4444.

If you have a question or if you can't find what you are looking for get in touch with us.