Edgeworks News

November 04, 2009

Edgeworks Care Academy launches new courses

Care Academy is pleased to announce the launch of our latest course, 'Understanding Challenging Behaviour in Care' which whilst being important in it's own right, is perfectly timed to compliment our Level 2 Dementia course.

Given the estimate that some 70% of people living with dementia will exhibit some form of challenging behaviour during their lifetime, it will come as no surprise to discover that it's a subject high on many care providers agenda.

Challenging Behaviour is a complex subject, so it's reassuring to know that our course meets the requirements of Skills for Care Induction Standards, with the key learning outcomes being:

  • Explain what challenging behaviour is and possible reasons for it occurring. 
  • List the different types of challenging or aggressive behaviour.
  • Understand how to manage challenging/aggressive behaviour.
  • Understand the importance of your own personal safety when working alone.
  • Describe how to identify the risks and how to apply risk assessment procedures to your work.

To find out more about Care Academy please call 0161 228 1712 or contact us via our online form.

Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags: ,

October 08, 2009

Free Infection Prevention and Control Training

SwineFlu_ALT_MASTER_SCOT_342x198 With the threat of swine flu now seeming no more than a distant memory, Infection Prevention and Control is still very much a hot topic for the Care Quality Commission. In their recent report; 'Working Together to Prevent and Control Infections', CQC suggest that infection prevention in care homes is inadequate, with many failing to follow guidance documents published by the Department of Health; 'Essential Steps' which provides practical advice on infection control and ' Infection control for care homes'.

In August, the Department of Health launched a consultation on revising the infection control guidance for care homes as part of a wider review on a new code of practice for health and social care providers on infection prevention and control. The draft code contains details of how providers should comply with registration requirements which will come into force for NHS providers in April 2010 and adult care providers in October 2010.

To help organisations prepare to meet their compliance requirements, Edgeworks has decided to offer new Care Academy clients free access to our dedicated 'Infection Prevention and Control' online learning until March 2010.

The course is designed to meet Skills for Care knowledge set for Infection Prevention and Control, covering:

  • The cause and spread of infection.
  • Preventing and controlling the spread of infection.
  • Management of infectious outbreaks.
  • Roles, responsibilities and boundaries (this module requires the student to 'understand the organisation's key policies and procedures').

Upon completion, users will be able to download a certificate of completion for their portfolios and managers will be able to access detailed management reports on-demand.

Additionally, as part of this promotion, we will also include access to our unique 'Policy-Safe' solution, enabling client's to deliver, track and confirm acceptance of key policies and procedures which is crucial to achieving compliance. 

The Infection Prevention and Control course will be made available to the first 25 organisations on a 'first come first served' basis and will include a maximium 50 user licence.

To discuss in more detail or to claim your free access, please contact us on 0161 228 1712 or via our online form.

Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags: , ,

October 05, 2009

On our way to becoming market leader in technology enabled learning

07learningservicesEdgeworks Care Academy now provides learning and assessment materials to more than 25,000 users UK wide along with a range of innovative workforce development and management technologies. In September 09 alone, we recorded more than 5,500 learning hours, with this figure growing month on month. We expect to deliver more than 10,000+ learning hours per month by the end of 2009!

Based on the above, we're well on our way to becoming the market leader in technology enabled learning for the social care sector.

Key Technology Developments

Care Academy is the only Learning Management System on the market that has been developed specifically for the care sector. This means all of our learning content is contextualised and has not been created for another sector and then simply re-badged. Our Learning Disability Induction Award is the only accredited City & Guilds course of it's kind. Furthermore, we aim to use the same unique technology to deliver more courses focusing on Dementia, Mental Capacity Act and End of Life to name just a few.

We have also continued to build more unique functionality such as our Training Strategy Implementation (TSI) funding management and administration solution.  This innovative feature automatically generates the necessary TSI funding forms, complete with candidate details upon completion of the CIS - client's now never need miss an opportunity to claim valuable training funds!

Return on Investment

Care Academy typically delivers 1 learning hour for every £1 of investment, with larger employers benefitting from even greater economies of scale. Compared with the traditional cost of delivering, managing, tracking and reporting on compliance related training, Care Academy continues to provide unbeatable value-for-money.

Enable Training Staff to deliver higher value courses

Many of our client's only really appreciate the true value of Care Academy after it has been deployed. Using Care Academy to deliver, manage and report on routine mandatory training enables valuable and expensive training staff to focus their efforts on delivering higher value, more rewarding training programmes. By re-focussing on 'specialist' areas, the training team can then make a significant impact on the business strategy. So not only do training personnel love Care Academy, but so too do Operation and Finance managers!

If you would like to find out more about how Edgeworks Care Academy can help you deliver your training please contact us on 0161 228 1712 or via our online form.

Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags: , , ,

June 19, 2009

Care Academy adds Administration of Medication to course portfolio

Edgeworks has added our Administration of Medication training course to Care Academy..

The course covers the Knowledge requirements of the Health & Social Care NVQ optional Unit 375, including:

  • Legislation and organisational policy and procedures
  • Drug storage (such as medical and legal regulations, local pharmacy policy)
  • Drug handling, preparation and administration
  • Health and safety when dealing with drugs (eg COSHH)
  • Theory and practice
  • Care and support
  • Pharmacology
  • Materials and equipment e.g. medication aids
  • Reporting, recording and documentation

Written by industry experts and reviewed by CSCI (now CQC), the course will ensure staff receive training in line with national minimum standards and when supported with workplace supervision, will exceed inspection requirements.

To find out more about our Administration of Medication course please contact us.

Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Care Academy adds Administration of Medication to course portfolio

Edgeworks has recently launched our Administration of Medication training course to Care Academy..

The course covers the Knowledge requirements of the Health & Social Care NVQ optional Unit 375, including:

  • Legislation and organisational policy and procedures
  • Drug storage (such as medical and legal regulations, local pharmacy policy)
  • Drug handling, preparation and administration
  • Health and safety when dealing with drugs (eg COSHH)
  • Theory and practice
  • Care and support
  • Pharmacology
  • Materials and equipment e.g. medication aids
  • Reporting, recording and documentation

Written by industry experts and reviewed by CSCI (now CQC), the course will ensure staff receive training in line with national minimum standards and when supported with workplace supervision, will exceed inspection requirements.

To find out more about our Administration of Medication course please contact us.

Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags: , ,

March 25, 2009

Care Academy welcomes new Learning Disability Qualification clients

Edgeworks would like to extend a warm welcome to our latest clients The Priory Group, Care UK, Circle Anglia and Lancashire Workforce Development Partnership who are all currently piloting the UK's first and only accredited online Learning Disability Qualifcation - Induction Award programme.

As a fully online programme, both the delivery of learning content and assessment is delivered via our unique Care Academy Learning Management System, which means no lost paperwork and every user's details are instantly available and fully trackable!

We wish all our new clients every success with their pilots and look forward to rolling out even more courses and programmes with them in the near future.

To help new customers understand how our online Learning Disability Qualification actually works, including the submission and marking of assignments online, we have created a short presentation which is available as either a PowerPoint or PDF document. If you would like to receive a copy of the presentation please contact us on 0161 228 1712 or via our online form.

Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

March 24, 2009

Edgeworks technology helps organisations access government training funds

Despite the fact that Training Strategy Implementation (TSI) funding has been available for some time, some care organisations are still missing out on claiming around £75 per completed induction!

Whilst the reasons may well be many and varied, a common problem appears to be that often the responsibility for processing the claim is not centralised, rather it is the responsibility of managers and staff to complete and process the necessary paperwork. Hardly surprising then that this is often overlooked and vital funding is not claimed!

Skillsforcare In order to address this problem, Edgeworks has developed and recently introduced an automated TSI funding feature within Care Academy. This ensures that TSI forms are generated automatically upon completion of the induction and signed 'electronically' by the individual. This not only reduces the burden of administration but also ensures no missed funding opportunities. In fact, we recently demonstrated to one client that by using our system to centralise and claim all the funds they were entitled to the system would pay for itself within the first year and provide additional funds to support other training activities!

Our system has been approved by Skills for Care and should provide a welcome relief to over - worked staff.

To find out more about our TSI funding technology please contact us on 0161 228 1712 or via the online form.

Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags: ,

Policy Safe now available to Care Acadmey customers

After many months working 'under the bonnet' our technology team has finally delivered our all new Policy-Safe solution.

Policy-Safe is a market leading end to end policy management and compliance solution. If you need to ensure key policies and procedures are delivered, read, understood and acted upon, then Policy-Safe is a must have product.

The new updated version now includes an enhanced administration interface to help managers easily upload, manage, distribute, assess and track key policies and procedures.

Policy-SafeFrom a users perspective, individuals are now presented with a clean, user friendly policy document which they can read, answer key assessment questions and both acknowledge receipt and acceptance.

Policy-Safe can be used in any environment where policy management is required, with typical applications covering:

  1. Recruitment
  2. Employment Contracts
  3. Induction
  4. Health and Safety
  5. Quality Assurance
  6. Training

Policy-Safe has been designed to provide complete peace of mind to senior managers who have responsibility for ensuring compliance with organisational policies and procedures.

To find out more about Policy-Safe please contact us on 0161 228 1712 or via our online form.

Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags: , ,

October 01, 2008

SKILLS365 gets an upgrade

Here at Edgeworks we are constantly up-dating and improving our products and services to ensure Care Academy remains the best online learning management system (LMS) available to Care Organisations, Housing Associations and Local Authorities in the UK.

We are pleased to announce that we have made some important improvements to Skills365 our market leading Learning and Content Management System (LCMS). These enhancements are based on feedback from you our customers and include:

  • Enhanced reporting speeds.
  • Additional reporting tools.
  • Flexible Induction training plans allowing service managers to choose training elements relevant to their location, organisation and job roles.
  • Further integration with Policy-Safe our policy management product.

These improvements make Care Academy even easier to use as many of them are based on client recommendations, we hope that you are as pleased with the improvements as we are!

Care Academy our on-line training programme offers a variety of courses Common Induction Standards (CIS) from Skills for Care, Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults (POVA) and Children's Workforce Development Council (CWDC) induction standards.

For more information on these courses or Skills365, please contact us via our online enquiry form.

Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

May 16, 2008

Edgeworks launches online Learning Disability Qualification-Induction Award (LDQ-IA)

We are pleased to announce the launch of our online Learning Disability Qualification-Induction Award (LDQ-IA).

Available via Care Academy, this programme has been launched in conjunction with guidance from Skills for Care and City & Guilds and is the new developed learning programme, from what had previously been identified as the Learning Disability Award Framework (LDAF).

This training programme is up to date with current guidelines for all new starters in Learning Disability Service; who are expected to undertake this qualification, regardless of NVQ achievement.

This training programme offers great benefits and we feel that our online approach offers learners something individual in its educational flexibility and geographical coverage. For more information feel free to call Paul Allman on 0161 228 1712 or take a look at our website to discover these benefits for yourself or request a demo.

Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Next »