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Welcome to the Domiciliary Care Training Programme

The Gold Standards Framework (GSF) Domiciliary Care Training Programme was first developed in 2011 initially at Certificate level to improve care for people in their last year of life. In 2019 the GSF Domiciliary Care Gold Quality Improvement Programme was introduced, leading to accreditation and the Quality Hallmark Award. Domiciliary care has a very important role to play in care for people living at home, and particularly for those who may be in the final year of life. Domiciliary Care workers are vital in helping people to live well and to remain at home right to the end if they wish to, thereby decreasing avoidable crisis hospital admissions. Yet, often care workers have not received adequate training and don't feel confident in this important area of care or able to work effectively with other community teams. Over 3,500 teams have been GSF trained since 2004, with hundreds accredited and reaccredited, improving care for millions of people. The Domiciliary Care programme fits with other GSF training programmes to enable domiciliary carer workers to gain the knowledge and understanding of how to proactively support their clients as an integral part of the community team. 

GSF helps implement national policy in practice. GSF improves proactive, personalised, well-coordinated care, in line with the NHSE Long Term Plan, NICE Guidance, supporting GPs’ Quality Outcomes Framework, enhancing quality of care and reducing crisis hospital admissions and deaths, whilst providing evidence of impact for CQC and local commissioners

The GSF Accreditation Quality Hallmark Award is nationally recognised as a kite-mark for quality, recognised in by Care Quality Commission, and co badged with National Care Forum, Care England, National Care Association, British Geriatrics Society, Royal College of GPs, and other national organisations, with high numbers of ‘CQC Outstanding’ organisations being GSF Accredited. In 2021 we celebrated with Bluebird care agency Newcastle and South Tyneside who were the first Domiciliary Care Provider in the country to be GSF Accredited!

 

The training includes:

  • 8 Live Webinar Sessions: Each session covers one of the GSF 7 key tasks, sharing good practice and monitoring step-by-step progress.
  • Tools & Resources: Exclusive access to our members area and resources, including teaching materials, posters, videos, leaflets and good practice guides.
  • Measures: Intrinsic evaluations showing benchmarked change and progression over time. The evaluations are at the organisational, client and staff level and are aligned with national targets to demonstrate change.

There are three different ways to access the programme:

  • Silver programme: Care Agencies attend 8 live training webinars (2.5 hours per webinar), there is a webinar every 3 weeks over 6 months
  • Gold Programme: Care Agencies attend 8 live training webinars, there is a webinar every 3 weeks over 6 months. On completion of the training programme the village staff give themselves 6 months to embed their learning into practice before applying for accreditation.  
  • Bespoke flexible delivery of the programme nationally for your group of Care Agencies (corporate), or for Care Agencies within a locality (CCG/ PCN/ ICS footprint).

The Accreditation Process

There are four parts to the process:

  • Part 1: Key Outcome Ratios - evidence of attainment of standards in key areas over the last year & Client Audit - Supportive Care Analysis x 5 deaths to demonstrate that GSF is embedded in practice at client level.
  • Part 2: Portfolio of evidence - statement of how you attain the 7 key tasks with supporting evidence and an action plan for sustainability. 
  • Part 3: Assessment Visit - Visit from The GSF Assessment team to assess implementation, team awareness and long-term sustainability.
  • Part 4: Attendance at the GSF conference to celebrate your success and receive your Quality Hallmark Award. 

GSF training is also provided by our Regional Training Centres (RTC). The Regional Training Centres offer live webinar training or face to face workshops locally: Find an RTC near me 

Poster Summary of Domiciliary Care Programme - A useful summary poster, describing the aims, methods, outcomes and impact of the GSF Domiciliary Care Programme. 

GSF & Skills for Care Qualifications. GSF has mapped its Quality Improvement Training Programmes to Skills for Care qualifications. The qualifications detail the core learning elements for each unit. These units can be built up to help individuals gain QCF (Qualification Credit Framework) credits and CPD (continuing professional development) points. These credits can be used to gain vocational qualifications at Award, Certificate or Diploma level and sometimes used towards higher level qualifications. For further details, follow the link: Skills for Care Mapping Document

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