Welcome to your June 2025 Workforce Development Update from Leeds City Council’s Organisational and Workforce Development Service. We hope that you find the articles and topics useful. In this edition you will find important news, updates, and information on some of the current and planned initiatives which will support you and your workforce.
Featured in this edition:
- Upcoming adult social care training sessions and events
- The Leadership Academy
- Quality Assured Care Learning Service
- Leadership Academy courses
- Adult Social Care – Workforce Data Set
- Funding opportunities
- Adult Social Care Learning & Development Support Scheme
- Leeds Registered Manager Network
- Recruitment and retention
- Care provider bursaries
- Skills for Care update
- Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard
- What’s new this month
- Coffee and a chat
- Capacity Tracker – systems experience
- Care Workforce Pathway
We are pleased to let you know that new dates for free mandatory training provided by the Leeds City Council Organisational & Workforce Development Team have now been added for June 2025 onwards. Please visit our website for more details about the courses taking place in June and beyond, and how to book a place.
The Leadership Academy exists to support and develop leaders and managers across adult social care, improving their confidence and capability to ensure the teams they lead are better able to provide high quality care. It does this by providing a range of courses throughout the year. These courses are delivered by experts, professionals, and sector leads; providing training which underpins leadership and management best practice and qualifications, as well as supporting on-going individual continual professional development.
Quality Assured Care Learning Service (QACLS)
We are delighted to be able to tell you that the Leadership Academy has been successful in its application to be a QACLS endorsed training provider.
Why has the Quality Assured Care Learning Service been launched? The DHSC has contracted Skills for Care to develop a new Quality Assured Care Learning Service. The QACLS will review the quality of individual courses and qualifications delivered by training providers in the sector. Those which meet a high standard and deliver good learning outcomes will successfully achieve quality assurance. The intention of the QACLS is to ensure that the sector can easily identify good quality training and development and trust that courses and qualifications identified and funded by the government meet their needs. The quality standards which have been developed are a bespoke measure of quality learning and development for the adult social care workforce. They are designed to set a benchmark for quality training delivery and support employers to make informed choices.
From the 2026 – 2027 financial year only courses and qualifications delivered by training providers that have been quality assured will be eligible for LDSS funding or inclusion in the Care Workforce Pathway. This means that employers will not be able to claim funding for courses and qualifications identified in the Adult Social Care Learning and Development Support Scheme that are not quality assured.
The following Leadership Academy programmes and courses are covered by the QACLS:
- Lead to Succeed
- Well-led
- Leading change Improving Care
- Understanding Performance Management
- Understanding Self-Management
- Understanding Workplace Culture
Further information about all these opportunities can be found in the Leadership Academy prospectus, by visiting our website, or via PAL.
The following Leadership Academy courses are taking place in June and July:
- Audit Reporting and Action Planning 20/06/25
- Well-led, Programme 1, starts 04/07/25 *
- Recruitment and Selection (ACAS) 21/07/25, AM
- Managing Performance and Appraisals (ACAS) 21/07/25 PM
- Understanding Self-Management 24/07/25 *
Don’t forget, the programmes with a * are eligible for the Learning and Development Support Scheme (LDSS) funding, as such, you could claim back the full programme fees. See the article below for further details on the LDSS.
Adult Social Care - Workforce Data Set
The Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) is an online data collection service that covers the adult social care workforce in England. It is important that providers in Leeds are signed-up to and using the ASC-WDS. We want to support you with this, so we will be providing a series of on-line workshops. The aims of these sessions are, to learn about all the benefits of having an ASC-WDS account, how to set-up an account, links to support and how we are utilising the data in Leeds.
The first workshop took place on the 22 May. You can see the presentation here. The other workshops will take place on the 25 September and the 25 February 2026. Watch out for further information and how to register.
On the 10 June Skills for Care are running an on-line event to support you with the data set. You can Join them to find out about the benefits of the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set. Book your place here Take a virtual tour of the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set
Adult Social Care Learning & Development Support Scheme
We hope that you have started to take advantage of the new Learning & Development Support Scheme (LDSS). The purpose of the LDSS is to provide financial assistance to any eligible adult social care employer towards the costs of recognised training courses and qualifications.
We are delighted that the Department of Health and Social Care have confirmed that the LDSS is available for 2025/26. As the overall funding amount is finite, we recommend that employers make their claims as soon as employees complete their qualification or courses.
The following link will provide all the information that you need to utilise this funding Adult Social Care Learning and Development Support Scheme
Remember, many of the learning opportunities provided by our Leadership Academy are eligible for the LDSS.
The network is a place for managers to come together with other managers from across Leeds. It offers a safe space to connect with peers, an opportunity to be open with each other and to support each other’s challenges, as well as building and sustaining a positive collective identity.
At each network, managers share knowledge and can access peer support. They hear from a range of guest speakers including local CQC inspection teams, commissioners, Integrated Care System (ICS) representatives and local wellbeing hubs etc. Certificates of attendance are also offered and are a great way for managers to evidence their CPD to the CQC.
The last network meeting was held on the 5th March 2025. The notes from this meeting can be found by using the link.
These are the dates of the future network meetings:
- 23/07/25 14:00 to 16:00
- 22/10/25 09:30 to 11:30
- 25/02/26 14:00 to 16:00
All the meetings will take place at the Community Centre, Marjorie and Arnold Ziff Building, 311 Stonegate Road, Moortown Leeds, LS17 6AZ.
If you have any topics that you would like to be included in the meetings, please let us know. If you would like to be added to the network’s membership, please email either:
Ailsa.benn@skillsforcare.org.uk or trevor.hewitt@leeds.gov.uk
International recruitment project
Bursaries are now available via the Yorkshire and Humber International Recruitment project. The YHIR Project aims to support displaced international workers, who’s employer has had their sponsorship licence revoked, to help them find alternative sponsored employment in the care sector.
Care Providers: Home Office Approved Sponsor (HOAS) Bursary
This bursary is for Care Providers who do not currently hold a sponsorship licence, but who wish to apply to the Home Office to become an approved sponsor. YHIR have develop a comprehensive support package to help providers understand their responsibilities and commitment of being a sponsor prior to applying. We can also expedite the decision making to speed up the process once providers have submitted their application. Upon approval of becoming a Home Office Approved Sponsor (HOAS), the YHIR will reimburse the cost of the application which will either be £536 (small employer < 50 staff) or £1476 (large > 50 staff). Further information is available here.
Care Providers: Sponsorship Bursary
To support existing HOAS sponsors who make an offer of employment to a displaced sponsored worker that is introduced to them by the YHIR programme, there is a bursary available to help with costs. The YHIR project will be making available a bursary of £1750 for each displaced international worker introduced by the project, subject to eligibility criteria. The YHIR team will provide support to Providers to confirm eligibility and the bursary will be released once the worker starts employment.
There is also a bursary available for the workers to support in the visa costs
For further details or to apply please contact the West Yorkshire project lead on yhirwestyorkshire@bradford.gov.uk or the We Care Academy at wecareacademy@leeds.gov.uk
From 9th April, care providers in England who wish to recruit a new worker from overseas, or those switching from another visa route, will have to first prove that they have attempted to recruit a worker from within the UK who is already in the route and needs new sponsorship.
Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard Report
In May, Skills for Care published their latest findings from the Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard (SC-WRES). The SC-WRES improvement programme is designed to support social care organisations to achieve anti-racist workplaces. It requires participating local authorities to report data on nine indicators which compare the experiences of people from minoritised ethnic backgrounds to white staff. The improvement programme also requires participants to develop action plans based on the findings and produce their own local authority report.
76 local authorities participated in the improvement programme in 2024. The data from the responding local authorities represents 97,900 staff: 58,600 staff working in adult social care and 39,300 in children’s social care.
The findings of the report suggest minoritised ethnic staff are significantly more likely to experience a disadvantage across most of the SC-WRES indicators compared to their white colleagues.
You can read the full report here.
Coffee and a chat
Next month we are launching a new service, ‘coffee and a chat’. These will be one-hour, on-line sessions (MS Teams) hosted by a member of the organisational and workforce development team. The purpose of these sessions is to tell colleagues in the sector more about the support we provide, how to access it, and to inform and talk about what’s happening in relation to workforce development and learning.
We will tell you more about this in the next couple of weeks and how to get involved.
Capacity Tracker System experiences (Leeds City Council only)
A team at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is undertaking an evaluation of Capacity Tracker for the DHSC. This system requires registered providers of social care to routinely return data about their service, including a small set of mandated questions reported on a monthly basis. Its goal is to ensure that the data is useful to a range of colleagues, including NHSE discharge coordinators and colleagues in councils, such as care planners and commissioners, and strategic decision makers etc. LSE are aware that there are varying views about the value of Capacity Tracker, and they are keen to hear from both enthusiasts and sceptics in councils who do, or potentially could, use the system and its data. If you are interested in sharing your experience, the team will organise a confidential interview with you (about 30-60 minutes). For more information please contact Mike Clark M.C.Clark@lse.ac.uk
Care workforce pathway for adult social care
The care workforce pathway outlines the knowledge, skills, values and behaviours people need to work in adult social care. The care workforce pathway is a new career structure for the adult social care workforce. The pathway was launched in January 2024, covering 4 direct care role categories. Four more role categories were added in April 2025, as below. The 8 role categories are now:
- new to care
- care or support worker
- enhanced care worker
- personal assistant
- supervisor or leader
- practice leader
- deputy manager
- registered manager
On the 24 May the pathway was updated as follows; the 'deputy manager' and 'registered manager' role categories (in 'The behaviours people must show' section) to say: the Management and Leadership Code for Health and Social Care (draft version) is expected to be published later in 2025.
And on the 14 May it was updated with an easy read and a full version of the pathway.