The children's home workforce development plan

What a workforce development plan is, and what it is for

The plan connects three things the regulations already require you to have: a statement of purpose describing the children this home can care for, a staffing structure capable of delivering it, and staff who are qualified, trained, supervised and appraised. It shows whether those three line up. It records what is being done when they don't.

Workforce plan, workforce development plan and workforce development strategy are used interchangeably in the sector for the same document, and none of those three labels appears in the regulations. The Guide's own word is "workforce plan". What matters more, to us, is the direction of travel: from the children living in the home now, to the skills someone needs on shift tonight, to a named person doing a named thing by a named date. A plan that discusses recruitment and induction in the abstract has stopped halfway.

The expectation comes from statutory guidance rather than the regulations, which is a different kind of authority. We haven't found a form or template for the plan published by the DfE or Ofsted, so there is nothing official to fill in. If somebody offers you an "Ofsted approved" one, ask them where it came from.

Providers running several homes usually write one plan per registered home. Nothing we can find requires that. It's simply that a group plan averages the purpose, the structure and the children into something accurate about nowhere.

Where the expectation comes from

Paragraph 10.8 of the DfE's statutory Guide is where the plan appears by name. It opens flatly: "The registered person should have a workforce plan". What follows reads to us as more prescriptive than its status suggests.

Group what it asks for and three things fall out. The grouping is ours, not the Guide's, which runs as one list. The present: your staffing structure, including anyone commissioned to provide health or education, and the experience and qualifications of the people currently in it. The gap: further training those staff need to deliver the statement of purpose. The machinery: agreed timescales for induction, probation and core training, a process for supervision of practice, and a process for improving poor performance. Read that way, 10.8 is less a request for a document than a question: do you know where your workforce falls short of the home you described to Ofsted?

Two phrases do more work than the rest. The plan "should be updated" as staff complete training and qualifications, which rules out the version written for an inspection and then filed. And it should record ongoing development needs "including the home's manager", the line we most often see missing, probably because the manager usually writes it.

Regulation 13, the leadership and management standard, is the outcome the plan serves. Regulation 13(2) sets out three duties separately: staff with the experience, qualifications and skills to meet the needs of each child, sufficient staff to provide care for each child, and a workforce that provides continuity of care. Because they are separate, a post covered by rotating agency workers can satisfy the headcount and still fall short on continuity.

Regulation 16 and Schedule 1 then pull part of the plan into a document that does leave the building. Paragraphs 19 and 20 require the statement of purpose to detail staff experience and qualifications, and the staffing structure including arrangements for professional supervision, and Guide paragraph 10.10 names those as the parts of the plan that belong there. Nothing we can find in the regulations requires the plan itself to go to Ofsted. Regulation 16 does require the statement of purpose to be kept under review, with revisions sent to HMCI within 28 days. So a disagreement between the two sits on file somewhere you can't quietly edit.

The Social Care Common Inspection Framework is how Ofsted tests all of this. Its required evidence includes induction and training tailored to the specific needs of the children, and effective supervision and appraisal. It also lists "plans for staff development, including arrangements to ensure that staff have obtained appropriate qualifications by the relevant dates" among what an inspector discusses with the registered manager. The plan is, in other words, an agenda item.

That conversation gets sharp on qualifications. Where none, or very few, of the staff are qualified, and there is no prospect of the rest achieving the qualification within six months or by the relevant date, the framework says the judgement for the effectiveness of leaders and managers is likely to be inadequate, and certainly no more than requires improvement. The same framework says that a registered manager who has not gained the Level 5 or an equivalent within the three years, with no reason for a deferral, is in breach of regulation 28, and that the leadership judgement cannot then be outstanding.

The Guide is statutory guidance rather than law. That's not a licence to ignore it, since it is the reference point both sides work from, but departing from it is something you would want a reason for rather than an offence in itself. Writing that reason down, with evidence that the regulatory outcome is still met, is our advice rather than a stated rule.

What to put in it

Paragraph 10.8 lists what a plan should detail. It doesn't carve that list into sections and it doesn't set a number. The rows below, numbered 0 to 17, are ours: a working structure we find covers 10.8 and the regulations behind it without leaving obvious holes. Copy it and cut it down. The middle column is the question we think each section answers. A heading with nothing underneath it is how these documents pad themselves out. The right-hand column keeps the plan pointing at records you already hold, because anything copied across is wrong within a month.

Most rows do track something a source names: structure and staff profile from 10.8 and Schedule 1, qualification dates from regulations 32 and 28, induction and probation from regulation 33(1), supervision, appraisal and poor performance from 10.8 and regulation 33(4), agency and bank staff from Guide paragraphs 10.12, 10.16 and 10.17, turnover from 10.19, training resources from 10.11, evaluation from the SCCIF, and the last row from Schedule 1 paragraphs 19 and 20. Document control, the summary of the children's needs and the action plan are ours alone. No row here is a section anybody requires you to have under that name.

Section 2 is the one we see skipped, or filled with material that has no business in a document circulated to a group office. Use initials and describe the need, not the child, and check the section against your own data protection arrangements before the plan goes anywhere.

Here is one way the middle of a filled-in plan can read. The home is invented and so are the numbers, so take it as an illustration rather than a model answer. Picture a four-bed home for adolescents at risk of criminal exploitation: eight care staff, a deputy, a manager, one vacancy. Section 6 links the exploitation risk to scenario-based practice for the two newest staff, who have both done the e-learning and neither of whom has had to use it at eleven at night. It links the vacancy to a named recruitment action and to the shifts running on agency cover. It links a new admission who says very little to coaching for the whole team, not the keyworker alone. Each line carries an owner, a date and a test. Take those away and what is left is a wish list.

Building it: the sequence we use

No source prescribes an order of work, and other orders would do. These five steps are ours. What we would keep from them is the starting point: begin with what the home says it does and who is living in it now. Start from a training catalogue instead and you get a course list with a cover sheet.

Step five is the one we most often find blank. Choose the test before the training: for de-escalation, what a supervisor observes on shift the following month; for medication, a competency sign-off before that person administers anything unsupervised.

The staff induction checklist can carry the new starter sequence, leaving this plan to record who owns each step, by when, and whether it happened.

The training plan inside the workforce plan

The training plan is one part of the workforce plan. It explains why a piece of learning is needed, and who decided that. The training matrix records who completed it, when it falls due and what the evidence is.

• Start with need: we would want every line to trace to the statement of purpose, a child's plan, a role, or a gap somebody has observed. If you cannot name the source, the line is decoration.
• Separate the legal deadlines from your own choices: regulation 32(5) sets the Level 3 relevant date at two years after a post-April 2014 starter begins work in a care role, and regulation 28(3) sets the manager's Level 5 relevant date at three years after they start managing a home. Everything else runs to an interval you chose.
• Record your reasoning: there is no universal statutory course list and no universal refresher interval. Set a period per subject and meet it. Which interval you pick matters less, we would say, than whether your records match it.
• Check impact: the SCCIF descriptor for a good judgement on leaders and managers says training, development and induction activities "are evaluated to ensure that they lead to effective practice".

Neither diploma is issued by a training provider. Both are awarded by an awarding organisation through an approved centre, so carry the centre and the enrolment evidence, not the relevant date alone. Regulation 32(6) lets the registered person defer the relevant date where the individual has not worked in a care role for a prolonged period, or works part-time. Nothing we've found requires you to record the reason. Do it anyway: reconstructing the reason two years later, in front of an inspector, is the harder conversation.

Recruitment, retention and the gaps you already know about

A workforce plan that shows a vacancy is doing its job. What matters is what sits beside it: the effect on continuity, how it's covered meanwhile, and the route to filling it. The SCCIF asks for a contingency plan for vacancies that is clear and deliverable, including a change of registered manager. "Deliverable" is the word doing the work. A contingency resting on the deputy covering indefinitely describes the problem rather than answering it.

Two regulation numbers get transposed constantly. Regulation 31 is "Staffing of children's homes": temporary staff, continuity of care, and the requirement for at least one person on duty with a suitable first aid qualification. Regulation 33 is "Employment of staff": induction, probation, job descriptions, continuing professional development, practice-related supervision and annual appraisal. If a requirement is raised under regulation 31 because agency use is undermining continuity, and your response sets out your supervision and appraisal arrangements, you have evidenced regulation 33 and left the regulation 31 requirement exactly where it was.

The Guide is specific about agency and bank staff in four places. Paragraph 10.16 says to consider their skills, qualifications and any induction needed before they start. Paragraph 10.17 sets a ceiling: no more than half the staff on duty at any one time, by day or night, should be from an external agency. Paragraph 10.12 applies the regulation 32(4) qualification duty to agency and bank staff as well as your own, so the relevant date follows the person into your home. And 10.19 asks for turnover to be monitored for patterns and trends, not noted resignation by resignation.

Regulation 33 requires practice-related supervision but sets no interval, so the frequency is a choice you make and are then expected to keep.

Keeping it alive: review cycle and what triggers a rewrite

The regulations set no review interval here, so it's yours to choose and yours to be held to. Three dates already in the calendar make natural anchors: the quality of care review that regulation 45 requires at least once every six months, the ongoing duty in regulation 16 to keep the statement of purpose under review, and each employee's annual appraisal under regulation 33(4)(c). A common approach is to hang the plan off the quality of care review, because it is already diarised.

The interval isn't really the point. What triggers a rewrite is a change in one of the inputs below, and those don't wait for a review date.

Five ways we see these plans go wrong

1. It is generic. Hand it to somebody who has never visited the home and ask what the children living there need from staff. If they cannot say, neither can the plan.
2. Qualification dates are vague. "Working towards Level 3" isn't a status. For anybody who started after 1 April 2014, regulation 32(5) runs the relevant date from the day they started working in a care role, so it is knowable on their first shift.
3. Nobody owns the action. "Management team" is not a name and "ongoing" is not a date. Give every action one owner and a completion test somebody else could apply.
4. The plan and the matrix disagree. Different staff lists, different dates, different statuses. Two records that contradict each other do not average out to half credible, they undermine one another. Reconcile them at the review.
5. Attendance stands in for impact. A certificate shows a course was completed. It does not show that anything on shift is different.

Questions