Lead Practitioner in Adult Care

The Lead Practitioner in Adult Care will guide and inspire team members to make positive differences to someone’s life when they are faced with physical, practical, social, emotional, psychological or intellectual challenges. They will have achieved a level of self-development to be recognised as a lead practitioner within the care team, contributing to, promoting and sustaining a values-based culture at an operational level.

A Lead Practitioner has a greater depth of knowledge and expertise of particular conditions being experienced by the user of services. They will have specialist skills and knowledge in their area of responsibilities which will allow them to lead in areas such as care needs assessment, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, rehabilitation and enablement, telecare and assistive technology. They will be a coach and mentor to others and will have a role in assessing performance and quality of care delivery. Lead Practitioners in Adult Care may work in residential or nursing homes, domiciliary care, day centres, a person’s own home or some clinical healthcare settings. As well as covering Lead Practitioners in Adult Care this standard also covers Lead Personal Assistants who can work at this senior level but they may only work directly for one individual who needs support and/or care services, usually within their own home.

Job roles include Dementia Lead, Re-ablement Worker, Physiotherapy Assistant, Occupational Therapy Assistant, Public Health Associate Worker, Keeping in Contact Worker, Community Care/Support Officer, Social Care Assessor, Care Assessment Officer, Social Services Officer, Brokerage Worker, Rehabilitation and Reablement Assistant, Independence Support Assistant, Reablement Support Workers/Officer, Telecare Assistant and Assistive Technology Co-ordinator/Officer.

Gateway Requirements

The decision to take an apprentice through Gateway is made between the employer, training provider and apprentice, typically after 18 months on programme. The apprentice must have completed all on-programme elements before they enter Gateway, including completion of the Level 4 Diploma in Adult Care, and achieve Level 2 Literacy and Numeracy.

End-point Assessment (EPA)

EPA consists of two discrete assessment methods. These can be delivered in any order – via remote assessment – and are weighted equally in their contribution to the overall EPA grade.

Assessment Method	Weighting	Duration	To achieve a Pass	To achieve a Distinction
Observation of Practice	50%	Maximum 60 mins for observation, plus15 mins of post-observation questioning.	All of the Pass criteria must be met 100%	N/A
Professional Discussion underpinned by a portfolio of evidence	50%	90 minutes.	All of the Pass criteria must be met 100%	In addition to meeting the pass criteria, the apprentice must meet at least 21 of the distinction criteria.

Observation

Observation of practice must include the ability to demonstrate their skills, behaviour and leadership to external/internal stakeholders. In line with the nature of the job role, this observation is expected to involve BOTH internal and external staff. For example, this could be a specialist external dementia specialist, a local authority social worker, or anyone working beyond the immediate care employer that has a reason to be at the meeting. The apprentice must lead the observed activity and will have prepared for this after the gateway in agreement with the employer and Skillsfirst Assess. The apprentice should be given a minimum of 2 weeks and a maximum of 4 weeks to prepare for this activity following the gateway. Apprentices must ensure that the appropriate organisational staff are present at the activity and are notified in advance of the activity. Any preparatory documentation/presentation should be mapped against the required KSBs and should be shared with Skillsfirst Assess seven days before the observation.

Professional Discussion

The professional discussion is an in-depth, two-way discussion between the apprentice and the independent assessor. The professional discussion must take 90 minutes + 10% at the discretion of the independent assessor to allow the apprentice to finish their last point. The room should be quiet and free from distraction.

The independent assessor will ensure that a minimum of one question is asked for each of the knowledge, skills and behaviour groups that are mapped to this assessment method

Feedback

The IEA will not provide the apprentice (or their manager) with a preliminary grade, as it will be subject to Skillsfirst internal quality assurance processes. Skillsfirst will aim to confirm the apprentice’s final and overall grade approximately 10 working days after the last assessment.

Certification

Once moderation is complete and the apprentice has successfully completed all EPA methods, Skillsfirst will activate certification through the Apprenticeship assessment service. Certificates will be sent directly to the employer.

You can download a copy of the information on this page here

A link to the Lead Practitioner in Adult Care standards page can be found here