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On 05/10/2026 Skills England published the Employability Skills Framework. It’s short, plain and practical, and it’s aimed at young people moving into their first job. Health and social care could easily file it under education policy and move on.

That would be a mistake. Read it from the employer’s side and it’s one of the clearest descriptions of good front line management that government has put out in years. The sector is now taking on more people in their first job, and the framework describes the work of the person who supervises them.

What Skills England has published

The framework sets out thirteen skills. They are planning and organising, adapting, working with others, listening, speaking, leadership, learning and investigating, creating, problem solving and decision making, numeracy, digital literacy, reading and writing.

Each skill gets a short definition and the same set of questions. What does the skill look like in a first job? How might a young person have built it already, at school, in part time work or by caring for a family member? What should employers look for, how can they assess it, and how can they help develop it? Each skill also has a line on using AI tools well, from the employer’s side and from the young person’s.

It doesn’t start from nothing. It draws on the Standard Skills Classification and lines up with frameworks many employers already know, including the Skills Builder Universal Framework and the Essential Digital Skills Framework. Skills England’s stated aim is a shared reference point, because young people and employers too often fail to recognise the same skills in each other.

What it gets right

Three things deserve credit.

First, it treats employers as part of the answer. Most employability work stops at what the young person should be able to do. This framework gives equal space to what the employer does next, and it’s specific about it.

Second, the language is usable. “Check progress regularly and give simple feedback” is something a team leader can do on Monday morning. There’s very little jargon.

Third, it recognises experience that doesn’t come with a certificate. Balancing study with caring responsibilities is listed as a way of building planning skills. Many people come into care by exactly that route, and it’s good to see it named.

Read it as a manager

Take the column on how employers can help develop each skill and read it on its own. It describes what a good supervisor does.

Planning and organising. Set clear tasks and deadlines, show how to break the work into steps, and check progress.

Working with others. Explain roles clearly and give new starters a mentor in the team.

Listening. Model active listening and give structured instructions.

Adapting. Reassure people that mistakes are normal, and talk through what they learned and what they’d do next time.

Leadership. Give responsibility for small tasks, encourage ownership and recognise initiative.

Problem solving. Talk problems through together and look back at what worked.

Reading. Give clear written instructions and check understanding regularly.

Writing. Provide templates, show examples of good writing and give feedback.

None of this will surprise anyone who has had a good manager. What’s new is seeing it written down by a national body as the employer’s side of the bargain. If a new starter doesn’t develop these skills, the framework makes clear the employer had a part to play.

Why it matters more in care

In most first jobs these skills decide whether someone does well. In care they also decide whether people are safe.

Listening is how a new support worker notices that someone is quieter than usual, or in pain and unable to say so. Reading is following a care plan or a moving and handling instruction exactly. Writing is the daily record that a family, a safeguarding lead or an inspector may read months later. Problem solving and decision making is knowing when to act and when to escalate. Adapting is coping when a shift goes nothing like the rota said it would.

The framework’s line about reassuring people that mistakes are normal matters more here than anywhere. A new starter who feels safe to say “I got that wrong” raises a concern early. One who doesn’t feel safe may hide it.

Plenty has happened over the summer. Over the mostly scorching hot, nine weeks we gained a statutory pay-bargaining body for social care, ten new recognised job roles, a new category of CQC-registered provider, a clearer line between first aid and treatment, and visiting rights heading towards primary legislation. Here is the catch-up, with the dates you may want in the diary.

Workforce pay and careers now have a framework behind them

The most significant development of the summer is also the easiest to have missed, because the deadlines sit in 2027 and 2028.

On 16/07/2026 the government confirmed that the Adult Social Care Negotiating Body will be established by the end of 2026, bringing trade unions and employers together to negotiate on pay, terms and conditions, and wider employment matters. An independent chair will be appointed in early 2027. The first round of negotiations begins in April 2027 and the first settlement is due by April 2028, supported by £500 million for 2028/29. Secondary legislation to establish the body is expected in the autumn.

Sectoral collective bargaining is therefore coming to adult social care for the first time. For many of the roughly 19,000 providers in England, a negotiating body will be unfamiliar territory. There is time to get ready, and the next eighteen months are a comfortable window in which to look at pay structures, contracts and employee relations capability.

The following day brought Part 3 of the Care Workforce Pathway. Ten new role categories were added, covering activity co-ordinator, care technologist, nominated individual, corporate management, learning and development practitioner, quality assurance lead, administration, catering, domestic and maintenance. For the first time the pathway reaches everyone working in a care organisation rather than only those delivering hands-on care.

Two things follow. Your catering lead, maintenance team and administrator now sit inside a recognised national career structure with defined capabilities, which gives you something useful to say in a retention conversation. And learning and development practitioner is now a named role category, so whoever runs training in your organisation has a professional identity and a development route of their own.

A new category of registered provider, and a clearer line on first aid

On 27/08/2026 CQC published new guidance for providers delivering health care and treatment at sporting and cultural events, alongside an updated Scope of Registration. The registration window opened on 07/09/2026.

The government has removed the exemptions that previously kept sports grounds, gymnasiums and temporary event arrangements outside the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. Event medical providers, stadium clinical teams and festival cover companies now need to register for the regulated activity of Treatment of Disease, Disorder or Injury (TDDI). Stage one runs to 01/03/2027, and CQC begins regulating event treatment from 06/12/2027, so there is a reasonable runway.

The part worth reading even if events are nowhere near your world is what the same update did to the definition of first aid.

First aid is now described as the initial response to sudden illness, injury or deterioration, limited to interventions generally recognised as first aid. Cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED) use sit comfortably inside it. Basic physiological observations are included where they do not require clinical interpretation.

Sitting outside first aid are clinical diagnosis, interpretation of clinical investigations, treatment requiring the professional judgement of a listed healthcare professional, prescribing, use of Patient Group Directions (PGDs) or Patient Specific Directions (PSDs), and ongoing healthcare management.

The guidance puts it plainly. Where a listed healthcare professional relies on skills, knowledge or judgement acquired through their professional registration, the activity is no longer treated as first aid.

Think about how that reads in a supported living scheme, an extra care development or a day service employing a registered nurse in a non-clinical post. A nurse acting purely as a first aider does not trigger registration. A nurse who uses their professional title, or draws on registered skills, does. For a lot of organisations this conversation has simply never come up, and it is a straightforward one to have once you know it is needed.

CQC has also confirmed which professionals sit outside the TDDI list. They are clinical psychologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, pharmacists, opticians, dietitians, nursing associates, emergency care assistants, first responders in emergency care and ambulance care assistants. Registration cannot rest on employing these roles alone.

Separately, from 17/08/2026, ambulance services are asked to include additional documents with registration applications, which CQC says helps applications move through more quickly.

Delegation, and who carries the accountability

The same guidance sets out delegated healthcare in terms worth sharing with registered managers.

A healthcare professional employed by a TDDI-registered provider may delegate a procedure to a care worker or nursing associate employed by a second provider, such as a care home without nursing, a supported living service or a domiciliary agency. The first provider remains responsible for the treatment and its outcome, but cannot supervise another employer’s staff day to day.

That leaves the second provider with a clear and reasonable duty. Only allow staff to accept a delegated task where they have the support, supervision, education and training to carry it out competently, and where that can be evidenced. The guidance also confirms that nursing associates are not listed healthcare professionals for these purposes.

Skills for Care is hosting a national learning exchange on delegated healthcare and the insurance questions around it on Wednesday 16/09/2026, 14:30:00 to 15:30:00, which may be worth an hour.

Rights and duties being strengthened

On 09/09/2026 the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) published the Health Bill impact assessment on promoting visiting. Visiting currently sits within Regulation 9A, and moving it into primary legislation points to a firmer footing ahead. Housing with care and supported living providers may find it helpful to remember that tenancy arrangements do not change the expectation.

The unpaid carers action plan published on 14/07/2026 sets out 42 actions across three themes, recognise, refer and reach. The commitment with the clearest employer implication is that from spring 2027, organisations with more than 250 workers will be required to improve support for unpaid carers among their staff. Carers also become central to hospital discharge planning under Better Care Fund reforms. If you employ more than 250 people, and many housing associations and care groups do, this is a manageable piece of HR policy and manager training work with a comfortable lead time.

Baroness Casey’s early recommendations, which government is already taking forward, include a new national safeguarding board chaired by the Chief Social Worker and a review of adult safeguarding statutory duties and powers. Some movement on safeguarding law looks likely over the next eighteen months.

What six weeks of policy noise actually means for the people planning your workforce

If you are a Head of People, an education lead or a learning and development lead in health and social care, the last six weeks have probably reached you as a run of headlines you kept meaning to read properly and never found the time for. That is fair enough. Most of it was written for policy teams, not for the person holding the training budget.

So here is the short version, and more importantly, what it changes for you.

The regulator said the foundations are inconsistent

On 14/07/2026 the Care Quality Commission published the first national picture of how local authorities are meeting their Care Act responsibilities, drawn from 143 completed assessments. Sixty per cent were rated good, thirty five per cent required improvement, three per cent were outstanding and two per cent were inadequate.

The detail matters more than the headline. Delays in needs assessments and reviews came through as a common weakness, and CQC noted that plenty of the authorities rated good were sitting close to the bottom of that band. Chris Badger, Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care, pointed to too much variation in the key foundations of provision and described a gap in national standards around what people, providers and partners can expect.

Running alongside that, CQC is rebuilding how it assesses adult social care. The draft framework published earlier this year swaps the thirty four Quality Statements for twenty four Key Lines of Enquiry and replaces numerical scoring with written Rating Characteristics. The five Key Questions stay as they are. The consultation closed in June, and final frameworks are expected to be confirmed over the summer with implementation towards the end of 2026.

Government said the workforce is the immediate priority

On 29/07/2026 the Prime Minister used a care home visit to set out a new approach to social care reform. Buried in the announcement is the line that should interest anyone in a people role: the immediate focus is on lifting up the social care workforce, integrating it with the NHS workforce, and creating routes for progression, better pay, training and job security. The argument made was that we will not get the care service we want until we treat it as one workforce.

Prevention was named as one of four founding principles of a National Care Service, alongside a commitment to appoint a Dementia Tsar later this summer and a new ministerial group covering workforce, system reform and delivery.

The Commission said none of it works without public consent

Baroness Casey told the Local Government Association Conference on 07/07/2026 that England does not currently have a functioning system of adult social care, but a patchwork built up over decades without a clear plan or public mandate. Her warning was that reform attempted without an honest public debate about the hard choices will fail.

Her Commission has since been asked to report considerably earlier than planned, and on 29/07/2026 she launched a national public engagement programme running in two phases, the first on values, principles and eligibility, the second on funding and delivery.

And the workforce body published the tool

On 29/06/2026 Skills for Care launched the Behaviour Change Competencies Framework for Adult Social Care, developed with the Royal Society for Public Health. It takes work that already happens every day, supporting someone to stay active, manage anxiety or make a decision about their own independence, and gives it structure and shared language across roles.

It introduces no new requirements. What it does do is help services describe and evidence good practice in line with CQC expectations, and it supports delivery of the Care Workforce Pathway.

For two years, services across health and social care have organised their evidence around the Single Assessment Framework and its 34 quality statements. That is coming to an end. In 2026 the CQC is moving to sector-specific frameworks and bringing back Key Lines of Enquiry, and it is doing so in the busiest inspection year the sector has seen in a long time.

Whether you run a care home, a home care service, a hospital ward, a GP practice or a community service, the change is worth understanding now, not in the autumn. Here is what is actually changing, when, and why the Mental Capacity Act and the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards have quietly moved to the front of the queue.

Here is something worth sitting with for a moment. If an inspector asked five of your staff what your service stands for, how closely would their answers match?

Not the wording on the wall. Not the values in the induction pack. What they would actually say, in their own words, on a busy Tuesday.

That gap, between what leaders believe they have communicated and what their teams have genuinely absorbed, is where most leadership problems in adult social care quietly begin. It is also where a good inspection outcome is won or lost. Well led is consistently the key question that catches good services out, and rarely because the care is poor. Usually it is because the evidence of strong leadership is sitting in the manager’s head rather than anywhere a visitor could see it.

At Unique Training Solutions, the delivery of the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training is not just about meeting requirements—it is about meaningful cultural change. At the centre of this transformation are Experts by Lived Experience (EBLEs), whose insight, honesty, and courage are redefining what effective learning truly looks like.

For many of these co-trainers, the role is deeply fulfilling. It brings pride, purpose, and a sense of contribution that extends far beyond the classroom. One trainer describes feeling “fulfilled and proud,” knowing they are helping to raise awareness and support others who may have faced similar challenges.

We have loved spending a day with Lucy Moy as an Expert with Lived Experience, Facilitator Trainer with UTS. 
 
We are incredibly proud of Lucy Moy journey – progressing from Co-Trainer with lived experience of Autism to a Facilitating Trainer delivering Tier 2 Oliver McGowan sessions independently, with real confidence and pride. 
At UTS, we’ve consistently spoken about the impact that meaningful employment opportunities can have. Now we’re seeing the next step in that impact – progression, growth, and defined career pathways for people with lived experience. 
 
Lucy’s journey is exactly what this programme can achieve. 
Oliver’s legacy is improving lives in so many positive ways. 
 
For employers and learners receiving Oliver McGowan training, remember what you are learning and embedding today as compliant practice is more than training. It is knowledge that can change experiences, improve care, and ultimately save lives in many different ways. 

Across the UK, organisations are rethinking what “good training” really looks like—especially when it comes to the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism.

For customers of Unique Training Solutions, the conversation has clearly shifted. This is no longer about simply purchasing a training course. It’s about investing in confidence, credibility, and measurable impact.

When NHS Trusts, Local Authorities, and large health and social care providers commission this training, expectations are high—and rightly so. From ongoing conversations with partners and clients, a clear checklist has emerged that explains exactly why Unique Training Solutions continues to be chosen as a core provider.

What Organisations Are Really Looking For

Absolute Compliance

Organisations need complete confidence that their training meets national requirements. Unique Training Solutions delivers full alignment with the standards set by NHS England and Skills for Care within the Oliver McGowan programme—removing uncertainty and ensuring organisations remain fully compliant.

Genuine Co-Production

This is not optional—it’s essential.

With a team of over 120 lived experience experts with a learning disability and/or autism, Unique Training Solutions ensures that co-production is not just included, but embedded. The result is training that is authentic, powerful, and grounded in real experiences.

Proven Credibility and Track Record

Large organisations need assurance that their provider can deliver at scale and complexity. Unique Training Solutions brings a strong portfolio of successful delivery across large workforces, demonstrating reliability and consistency in high-demand environments.

Quality That Changes Practice

Training should do more than inform—it should transform.

Through robust evaluation, meaningful feedback, and clear outcomes, organisations are seeing real evidence that this training is influencing practice and improving the way services are delivered.

Scalability Across Organisations

Whether it’s multiple departments, services, or nationwide delivery, scalability is critical. Unique Training Solutions has the infrastructure and expertise to deliver consistently across diverse and geographically spread organisations.

For NHS Trusts and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), compliance with the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training is no longer a simple tick-box exercise — it has evolved into a system-level assurance priority.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) will assess compliance against the Code of Practice, and inspectors will expect clear, defensible evidence across services, directorates, and commissioned pathways. The question is no longer whether training has been delivered, but how well it is embedded, governed, and evidenced across the system.

What Will CQC Inspectors Be Looking For?

System-Wide Role Mapping

Every role — across clinical, non-clinical, corporate, and commissioned services — must be clearly mapped to Tier 1, Tier 2, or additional training requirements.

Inspectors will expect to see:

A clear and defensible rationale for each tier allocation
Consistency in mapping across divisions and partner organisations
Strong board-level oversight and accountability for compliance

Fragmented or inconsistent approaches across services will quickly raise concerns.

Robust Training Records & Governance Oversight

It is not enough to demonstrate that training has taken place. Trusts and ICBs must show that training delivery is accurate, validated, and properly governed.

This includes evidence of:

Reliable and up-to-date completion data
Verified trainer credentials
Use of the correct, approved version of the training package
Monitoring through formal governance structures and reporting frameworks

Any inconsistencies in data — particularly across services or commissioned partners — are likely to be scrutinised closely.

Inclusion is often talked about as a value, a policy, or a goal. But for the Experts with Lived Experience and Facilitating Trainers,  delivering our Oliver McGowan Mandatory programmes at Unique Training Solutions, inclusion is way more personal.

It is not theoretical. It’s lived.

Through their words, a powerful and honest picture emerges—one that challenges us to think differently about what inclusion really means in practice.

Inclusion Means Being Seen, Heard, and Respected

At its core, inclusion is about recognition.

It is about being treated “like you would anyone else,” not overlooked, and not left out when decisions are made or opportunities arise. It is about being part of conversations, social spaces, and everyday interactions—not as an afterthought, but as an equal.

Inclusion means:

having a voice
being heard and understood
and feeling like a valued part of a community

For many, this is where inclusion begins—but it is not where it ends.

Inclusion Is Not Just Acceptance—It Is Understanding

A strong message from trainers is that inclusion goes beyond simply “accepting” differences.

It is about listening, adapting, and actively removing barriers so that everyone has a genuine opportunity to contribute. It requires empathy, awareness, and openness—not assumptions.

Inclusion recognises that every person is unique. It means understanding individuals as they are, not as we expect them to be.

As one perspective highlights, inclusion is about ensuring differences are not just tolerated—but respected and valued.

Inclusion Must Be Felt, Not Just Stated

Inclusion is not a tick box.

It is not a policy that sits on paper or a statement that organisations claim to uphold. True inclusion is something people feel in their everyday lives.

It looks like:

feeling safe to be yourself
knowing your voice genuinely matters
not being judged or made to feel like a burden
having your needs met without constant compromise

It can be as simple—and as powerful—as a smile, a conversation, or someone taking the time to ask, “How are you?”

Because inclusion is built through small, consistent actions.

Inclusion Requires Action and Advocacy

For many Experts by Experience, inclusion also means recognising that not everyone can always advocate for themselves.

It means others stepping up—challenging barriers, creating opportunities, and ensuring people are not excluded because systems were not designed with them in mind.

This is especially important in areas like employment, where barriers remain very real. One of our lived experience experts, shared the reality of submitting over 250 applications and receiving only a handful of interviews—before finally finding a workplace that truly supports, respects, and values them.

That contrast highlights an important truth: inclusion changes lives.

When it is done well, it creates environments where people don’t just survive—they thrive. Where they wake up wanting to go to work, feeling valued and supported.