Training Matrix

Thanks to everyone who shared the recent supervision and CQC post; it is such an important piece of the Social Care jigsaw.  If you have not yet seen our free skills assessments, then check them out here.

This week I wanted to return to the training vs learning conversation because that is a similarly important topic as well; check out the original post here.  The essence of that post is that training is simply a method for delivering learning and learning is the important bit because that is what impacts on practice.

Training Matrix or Learning Matrix?

However, one of the things that CQC often asks to see is the training matrix, despite regulation being very clear about the principle of competence.  I suspect that this is because it is a speedy way for establishing the compliance health of a business in a single view.

Yet, a traditional training matrix is just a view on attendance or completion, i.e. when did someone attend a course and when are they “due” again?  In essence, this is just the first step in an ongoing journey.  Hopefully, you have all heard the expression “we learn something new every day” and, if we do, then ideally we would want to capture that learning (and evidence it too!).

A learning matrix or a competence matrix is much more robust because it requires additional elements to be in place.  Let’s take the Care Certificate for example:

You deliver the training…

The logical next step is to measure what someone has learnt from the training…

Supervisors then check practice using observations.

It is these three elements joined together that make up evidence of competence for regulation 18, or, as we like to call it, Know – Understand – Do.  This process then continues and also applies to the mandatory courses outlined in the Skills for Care mandatory training guide.

So, when we built our training matrix, which you will see the next time you sign in to Click, we included all of those elements, so it is much more like a competence matrix.

So, next time CQC asks to see your training matrix, you can say something like, “no problem, although ours is much more like a competence matrix because we capture more than just attendance.  We also track observations and learning assessments so we can be really sure that staff are safe to practise and not just attended a course!”

Let us know what they say…