Responsibilities

• The Health and Social Care Act (2008), and the linked regulations of 2014, require that the registered providers of care services must ensure that they have sufficient numbers of appropriately qualified staff to meet the needs of their service users at all times.They must also provide or support training and professional development to ensure that their staff can carry out their caring role.
• In the social care settings, new staff are required to cmplete an induction programme and to meet the requirements of the Common Induction Standards (2010) within 12 weeks of commencing their new job. This requires that the manager to ensure that all new empolyees understand how to implement the codes of practice in their workplace and how to meet the current National Occupational Standards (NOS) for their role. 

The NOS describes the best practice. They are the standards of professional practice that should be met in the workplace. The NOS fo rpeople working in the health and social care sector are applicable throughtout the UK and were updated in 2012. The NOS underpin the codes of practice in care settings and the cirriculum for the trainng of practitioners and cover the standards that are also included in the codes of practice for professional bodies, for example the Nursing & Midwifery Counscil ( NMC).

In order for health and care practitioners to maintain the high standards required in the sector, they need to continually update their skills. This will ensure that they are following the best practice and most up-to-date procedures, based on recent research. As discussed earlier in this unit all members of the GMC, the NMC and the HCPC are required to complete regular professional training to remain on their registers. It is the reponsibility of care managers to ensure that support staff who are not members of professional organisations also regularly update and extend their skills. 

Internal and external complaints:

All care organisations are required by their regulators, which include the professional organisations and the inspection agencies, to have formal procedures to address complaints.

Where allegations for poor people are made against staff, this will normally initially be addressed throughout the organisatons internal disciplinary systems. However, in more serious instances the regulatory body, for example the GMC, the NMC or the HCPC may be involved. In etreme circumstances, for example in cases of assult or death through to be caused by negligence or abusive abuse, the police may also deal with the complaints.