Is it against the law to send carers who haven’t shadowed to provide care?

 

Answered by Quality Compliance Systems (QCS)

This is an important question. CQC can take regulatory action. You can read more about the CQC enforcement policy here. As a provider, a Registered Manager must comply with Regulation 18: Staffing. This states ‘Providers must ensure that they have an induction programme that prepares staff for their role. It is expected that providers that employ healthcare assistants and social care support workers should follow the Care Certificate standards to make sure new staff are supported, skilled and assessed as competent to carry out their roles.

Training, learning and development needs of individual staff members must be carried out at the start of employment and reviewed at appropriate intervals during the course of employment. Staff must be supported to undertake training, learning and development to enable them to fulfil the requirements of their role. Where appropriate, staff must be supervised until they can demonstrate required/acceptable levels of competence to carry out their role unsupervised.’

Each provider must therefore individually assess each care worker when they start to understand what level of training, knowledge and experience they have, make sure they complete the Care Certificate and have the level of skills and knowledge for the care and support they are providing. This includes any local policies procedures and organisational requirements. As providing care is a practical job, assessing during shadow shifts is a good way of identifying whether someone needs more support or training. Therefore if a care worker is starting work without carrying out a shadow shift the provider may not be fully complying with Regulation 18. If you are concerned about this at your organisation, speak to the manager, if you can’t speak to her about it you should follow your whistleblowing policy.