The Care Certificate is the set of induction standards for health and social care workers who are new to care. Skills for Care, NHS England and Skills for Health updated them in March 2025. There are now 16 standards. Domiciliary care workers and home care workers are named in the standards as roles the certificate is for.
It is a recommended framework for England. It is not an Ofqual qualification, and an employer awards it. If you are hiring your first carers, the guide to starting a home care agency covers registration and the first jobs. This page is the induction those carers need before they are left in someone's house on their own. The checks that come first, the application, the references and the background check, sit in recruitment and staff files.
What it is, and what it is not
The October 2025 questions and answers, written by NHS England, Skills for Care and Skills for Health, describe the standards as a recommended tool for the minimum training, supervision and assessment that staff new to care should receive as part of induction. The standards were developed for use in England. Completion of all 16 is required before the full certificate is awarded.
The same document draws three lines that agencies blur.
The standards can sit inside a structured induction. They do not replace the learning that is specific to your agency, your recording system, or the people on the rota. Fire procedure, how to report an accident, and how this person likes their morning call are still the employer's to teach.
They do not replace statutory and mandatory training. A moving-and-handling course, or a medication competency for the tasks you actually delegate, still has to happen. Where a course overlaps a standard, it can feed the knowledge. It does not retire the rest of the induction.
They are not the Level 2 Adult Social Care Certificate. That qualification is covered later on this page.
Skills for Care's standards page says the older Care Certificate resources have not been refreshed for the March 2025 update. The October 2025 questions and answers say the old workbooks will not be replaced. If the pack in your office still has 15 standards, it is the previous version.
The duty underneath the certificate
The legal duty in England is Regulation 18 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. Staff employed in the regulated activity must receive the support, training, professional development, supervision and appraisal they need to carry out their duties.
CQC's guidance on Regulation 18 says providers must have an induction that prepares staff for the role, and that staff must be supervised until they can demonstrate the competence to carry out the role unsupervised. It also says all staff must receive training in how to interact appropriately with people with a learning disability and autistic people, at a level appropriate to their role. CQC cannot prosecute for a breach of Regulation 18. It can take regulatory action, and it must refuse registration where a provider cannot satisfy CQC that it will comply.
The October 2025 questions and answers quote that regulation and say employers can use the Care Certificate as a framework for meeting it. The assessor and employer guide says the standards can help meet the requirement that staff are supervised, suitably competent and trained. The regulation does not name the Care Certificate. An inspector will still ask what induction you gave, who assessed it, and why you decided this carer could work alone.
The 16 standards
The March 2025 standards list them in this order.
- Understand your role
- Your personal development
- Duty of care
- Equality, diversity, inclusion and human rights
- Work in a person-centred way
- Communication
- Privacy and dignity
- Fluids and nutrition
- Awareness of mental health and dementia
- Adult safeguarding
- Safeguarding children
- Basic life support
- Health and safety
- Handling information
- Infection prevention and control
- Awareness of learning disability and autism
Three of those titles cause mix-ups.
Standard 3 is duty of care: the worker's responsibility in the job, including speaking up when something is wrong. The statutory duty of candour is a different duty. It sits in Regulation 20 of the same 2014 regulations, and it belongs to the registered person when a notifiable safety incident occurs. CQC's guidance on Regulation 20 is the page for that duty. Completing standard 3 does not discharge it.
Standard 10 is the worker's awareness of adult safeguarding. The agency's duty to protect people from abuse and improper treatment is Regulation 13. An awareness session is the carer's introduction. The procedure for receiving a concern, referring it and recording it is the agency's.
Standard 16, added in the 2025 update, is awareness of learning disability and autism. The October 2025 questions and answers say this standard refers to the Regulation 18 training requirement, and that the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training is the government's preferred and recommended training for that awareness. They also say it is one way a provider could evidence standard 16, and that the learning should line up with the organisation's own training for this subject. A tick against standard 16 is the induction outcome. The level of training still has to match the role, which is the test in CQC's Regulation 18 guidance.
Standard 11 is safeguarding children. The questions and answers say that if a worker cannot complete every standard, the full certificate cannot be awarded. An employer may certificate the parts that were completed, and must not put the Care Certificate logo on that partial record.
Who assesses, and what counts
The assessor guide says the assessor is the person who decides whether the worker has met the standards. The assessor has to be competent in the standard they are assessing, usually because they hold a qualification related to the role. There is no requirement to hold an assessor qualification. The employer has to be confident the person is competent to assess. Basic life support may need a different assessor from the other standards.
There is no set exam and no maximum number of attempts. The guide's list of evidence includes observation and competency checks, witness testimonies, one-to-one or group discussion, oral or written answers, a small project, multiple-choice questions, and a record of simulated activity. It then excludes certificates of attendance, and e-learning with no summative assessment of what was learnt.
The October 2025 questions and answers split knowledge from skill. Outcomes that ask the worker to describe, explain, list or identify can be met with written or verbal evidence. Outcomes that ask the worker to demonstrate, show, or take steps must be observed in real work, unless that outcome allows simulation. Support workers can practise in a classroom. Most of the assessment evidence has to come from real work. The same document says e-learning can support the knowledge parts when it includes questions, and that e-learning alone cannot complete the certificate.
You can commission a learning provider to deliver some of the teaching. The employer still decides whether to award the certificate. An external trainer does not sign it.
Working alone in someone's home
The assessor guide says each assessment should fit the setting, and it names domiciliary care as one of those settings. It defines direct supervision as the worker being in the line of sight of a supervisor who can intervene immediately. Direct supervision continues until the worker is assessed as safe to be left with responsibility for the people they support.
The October 2025 questions and answers say the same thing in the language of a home care rota. The workplace assessment matters as much for community roles and domiciliary care as for any other service. Regulated providers are expected to assess the competence of the new support worker before they deliver care out of line of sight of a more experienced colleague, and to plan enough time for the assessor to do that.
In practice that is a joint visit. A quiz in the office can cover "explain". It cannot cover "demonstrate" on a standard that requires observation, unless the guide allows simulation because the situation may not arise during induction. The guide gives that permission outcome by outcome. It is not a general permission to simulate the whole certificate.
Sign-off can be phased. The guide says that once a worker has met a standard, the supervisor may allow indirect or remote supervision for that standard. The full certificate waits until all 16 are complete. After certification, supervisors still recheck, including by unannounced visits and spot checks. The guide says no support worker should be working totally unsupervised, and that the supervisor is accountable for the tasks they assign.
Signing the certificate
The assessor guide says the registered manager in adult social care signs the worker off as having met all the standards. The October 2025 questions and answers add the practical version. The full certificate is awarded only when all 16 standards are complete. The employer takes responsibility for the final sign-off. If the registered manager is absent, the recommendation is that the most senior appropriate person signs. The examples given are a responsible individual, a director, a registered nurse, an assistant manager, a senior care worker, or the registered manager of another service in the same company.
Use the national template from the Care Certificate standards page. The questions and answers say the certificate should go to the worker, with access to their portfolio, so they can show it to a future employer. The employer keeps the records for regulation and audit. The assessor guide says the record can also be entered on the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set, where the employer uses it.
The standards are not accredited. There is no requirement for an awarding body to quality-assure them. The employer assures the quality of the teaching and the assessment.
For agency, bank and other temporary workers, the questions and answers say a CQC-regulated provider has a duty to assess the training needs of all staff new to the organisation. That duty covers agency and bank workers as well as people you recruit directly. It is an assessment of what that person needs. It is not an instruction to withhold every visit until a full certificate exists for a worker who is already competent.
A carer who already has one
For staff who are new to you and have worked in health or adult social care before, the questions and answers say you should check that the skills and knowledge are current. The self-assessment tool is the document they point you to. You then arrange whatever extra training or workplace assessment the gaps require. In some cases that means the person completes the standards. In others it means a shorter refresh, plus your own induction into this agency.
Someone with a qualification or an apprenticeship is treated the same way: check currency, use the self-assessment, fill the gaps. Knowledge gained before they joined you still has to be matched with supervision and workplace assessment in your service.
The guide's point on portability is that the portfolio can travel with the worker as evidence. The new employer still decides whether it is enough.
The Level 2 qualification is a different product
Skills for Care's Level 2 Adult Social Care Certificate page describes an Ofqual-regulated qualification, with observational assessment. It says a new learner is expected to take around six to eight months, and that an experienced care worker may take less. It is available to eligible non-regulated care staff aged over 19. The recommended routes for adult social care say the qualification is based on the same 16 standards and builds on them. You might enrol someone during induction, or after probation. Either way it is further learning, not the induction sign-off.
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
The Care Certificate is the English framework. A service registered in another nation follows that nation's induction. The comparison of the four UK regimes sets out the regulators. The induction documents are separate from those registration regimes.
In Wales, Social Care Wales' page for a domiciliary care support worker says every employer is responsible for giving new workers a suitable induction using the All Wales Induction Framework for Health and Social Care. The framework sets out the knowledge and skills new workers need in the first six months. Workers may be new to the role, the organisation or the sector.
In Scotland, NHS Education for Scotland and the Scottish Social Services Council publish the National Induction Framework for adult social care. It launched on 14 May 2025. It is a free programme of learning for workers taking up a new support worker or practitioner role, with a record on the SSSC MyLearning app. The same page says employers remain responsible for staff having the right knowledge, skills and training.
In Northern Ireland, the Social Care Council's induction programme for social care practitioners sets out what a new worker needs to know to do the job safely and effectively within the first six months.
What to keep on the file
An inspector, and a new coordinator picking up the file after you, will look for a small set of facts.
- Which of the 16 standards are met, the date, and whether the evidence was observation, discussion, written answers or an allowed simulation.
- Who assessed each standard, and why that person was competent to assess it. Basic life support may be someone else.
- The registered manager's sign-off of the full certificate, or the senior person who signed in their absence, using the national template.
- The worker's copy and the portfolio, kept so the worker can take the evidence with them.
- The workplace induction that the certificate does not cover: your procedures, and the tasks this rota actually includes.
- Supervision and spot checks after the certificate, because the assessor guide treats certification as the start of indirect supervision, not the end of oversight.
On homecareOS, the staff record stores training certificates and flags them from 30 days before they expire, then as expired once the date has passed. Supervisions, annual appraisals and competency assessments sit on the same record. Overdue and upcoming reviews show in red and amber on the carer record and the staff compliance screen. That is the file. The judgement that a carer is safe to be left in the house, and the signature on the certificate, stay with the registered manager.
Sources
- Care Certificate standards, Skills for Care, for the March 2025 update, the national template and the note that older resources have not been refreshed.
- Care Certificate standards, March 2025, for the 16 standards and the roles they cover, including domiciliary and home care workers.
- Assessor and employer guide, March 2025, for assessment, direct supervision, phased sign-off, the registered manager's signature and what is not evidence.
- Questions and answers for health and adult social care professionals, October 2025, for England, partial certificates, community assessment, experienced staff, agency staff and standard 16.
- Self-assessment tool, March 2025, for checking a new starter who already has experience.
- Regulation 18 and CQC's guidance, for the staffing duty the certificate is used to evidence.
- Level 2 Adult Social Care Certificate and the recommended routes, for the separate qualification.
- Domiciliary care support worker, Social Care Wales; the National Induction Framework, NHS Education for Scotland; and the NISCC induction programme.