BUPA Care Homes delivering quality care through enhanced training

BUPA Care Homes is one of the largest providers of care to older people in the UK. It operates almost 300 nursing and residential homes, with more than 21,000 registered beds.

With an astounding 26,000 employees nationwide, BUPA Care Homes has always been firmly committed to training. After hearing about Train to Gain, the Government’s flagship service to support employers in England of all sizes and sectors to improve the skills of their employees, the company decided to offer care workers at 33 homes across the south of England the opportunity to study for an NVQ Level 2 in Care and some the opportunity to work on their literacy and numeracy skills.

Mark Walker, Health, Safety and Training Manager for BUPA Care Homes says the dedication of BUPA employees is the most important factor in delivering high quality care tailored to each residents’ individual needs.

He explains this as one reason why he decided to implement the Train to Gain service and invest in training and development.

‘There are quite a number of people in the care sector who are fantastic carers but it may have been a long time since they did any learning. We wanted to engage them back into education and develop their skills to benefit themselves and our customers too.’

The NVQ Level 2 in Care was delivered by national training provider NVQUK, which specialises in health and social care. Carers were able to work towards their qualifications in 14 intensive half-day sessions, which enhanced their commitment and motivation.

The training covered areas like health, care, hygiene and moving and handling and was done face-to-face in individual care homes. Some of the testing was carried out by e-learning.

‘There are very strict staff ratios in the care sector and the homes had to have cover for the learners,’ says Mark. ‘The training was arranged so that it suited the learners and also had minimal impact on the homes.’

BUPA is delighted with the results of Train to Gain, especially given that an impressive 94 per cent of their 211 care workers who took part completed their training compared to the industry average rate of 67 per cent.

‘To achieve these record completion rates is fantastic and has a knock-on effect, inspiring others to want to develop their skills, and helping us to retain staff,’ says Mark.

‘This has been a great opportunity to be at the forefront of helping to design future training programmes. The carers who took part have achieved a qualification and taken a real pride in it - rightly so. It’s fantastic for the business and for the learners and will have an effect on what they do for our customers too.’

Care workers at BUPA are full of praise for the training saying they received and felt a real sense of achievement when they’d completed it. Many said they had gained skills which would help them do their jobs better and looked forward to doing further training in the future.

To read more Train to Gain employer Success Stories, please visit traintogain.gov.uk