Whatever your role and level of experience, we (the Social Care Council) have developed resources and guides covering a wide range of topics to support you to:
- Discover quality assured content that provides positive learning experiences and has been developed in partnership with the sector, subject matter experts and key stakeholders to support your continuous learning journey and specific career pathway.
- Learn at a time and pace that suits you best as we know from evidence informed learning design that when leaners are provided access to learning content as and when needed this better supports them to retain what they have learned.
- Apply and transfer learning into practice.
- Reflect on your learning and the difference it makes to the well-being of the people you are supporting and caring for.
These resources are completely free, accessible anywhere, anytime, any device.
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Who can use the Learning Zone?
The Learning Zone is developed to support Social Care Council registrants continuous learning and development but can also be used by other health, social care, early years professionals and students undertaking learning and development or qualifications to become social care workers or social workers and to support families and carers.
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The aim of the Learning Zone is to:
- Help you (Social Care Council registrants) develop your knowledge and skills and take responsibility for your learning and development;
- Supplement and complement the training provided by your employer to support you to meet the training requirements within your role and setting;
- Support you to deliver safe, effective care that has standards and values at its core;
- Help you provide evidence for your learning for e.g. Reflective learning questions are built into all of our learning resources and can be used to evidence learning including your Post Registration Training and Learning.
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Embedding the Standards of Conduct and Practice
All learning resources on the Learning Zone are linked to the Standards.
As the regulator for the social care workforce, the Social Care Council works to ensure registrants put its Standards of Conduct and Practice at the heart of social care and social work practice and education. Adherence to the Standards supports the delivery of effective social care services both now and in the future.
This is to ensure registrants are provided with consistent messages about standards, values and best practice and why continuous learning facilitates delivery of safe, effective and value-led care and support. This supports registrants to meet
- Standard of Conduct 6: You must be accountable for the quality of your work and take responsibility for maintaining and improving your knowledge and skills;
- Standard of Practice 6: You must develop yourself as a social care worker and social worker.
- Embed the Standards into their day to day practice
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A Partnership Approach – Providing Authentic Learning
We work in partnership with subject matter experts, social care and social work employers, service users and carers, key stakeholders such as; DOH, RQIA and PHA but most importantly we work with the target user – social care and social work registrants.
This supports us to develop meaningful resources that include authentic real-world scenarios and reflective learning activities based on practice issues that concern and impact on you as a registrant.
Feedback about the Learning Zone is overwhelmingly positve:
Good mix of learning tools, videos, questions and answers etc. Could be used individually or with group of staff for shared learning and discussion.
Overall, very impressed with the content … Information was pitched at the right level, very easy to use site. Excellent sources of information provided.
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Reasserting the Importance of Learning and Reflection
There are no final assessments or certificates of completion built into our social care or social work resources – instead we include reflective learning scenarios and questions that can be used to evidence learning. The focus is on reasserting the importance of continuous learning and development.
To ensure learning is effective, it requires support and guidance and a holistic approach and key to this is ensuring leaners are provided with the time:
- to learn,
- to integrate/consolidate learning
- to apply and transfer what they have learned in practice and
- to reflect on what they have leaned – did the learning make a difference.
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Employer Responsibility
The Learning Zone resources do not replace the employer’s responsibility to ensure workers are provided with comprehensive training that enables them to deliver safe, effective care and support to meet the training requirements within their roles and settings.
Employers are more than welcome to use the Social Care Council’s resources and guides within the workplace to support a continuous development and learning culture which has standards and values at its core.
Go to Learning Resources to find our full library of resources.