Care and Support Planning
Care and support planning training delivered at your workplace or online. Half day or full day. Built around your documentation systems, your team, and the people you support.
Course Overview
A care plan that nobody reads is not a care plan. It’s a liability.
When care plans are generic, outdated, or written to satisfy an audit rather than guide actual care, they fail the people they’re supposed to support. Staff can’t rely on them. Needs get missed. Risks go unmanaged. And when a CQC inspector or a safeguarding team starts asking questions, the gaps in the paperwork tell their own story.
Care and support planning done well is something different. It is an active, working tool that reflects a real person’s needs, preferences, and goals. It gives staff clear direction. It changes when the person changes. It is written with the individual, not about them.
This training is designed to help staff make that shift. It builds the knowledge, skills, and confidence to write, use, and review plans that genuinely guide care, not just record it. The course connects care planning to its legal and regulatory foundations, to the people it exists to serve, and to the wider system of safeguarding, risk management, and documentation that surrounds it. Training aligns with the Care Act 2014 and its statutory guidance, CQC Regulation 9: Person-Centred Care, the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and Skills for Care guidance on person-centred approaches in health and social care.
Course Details
- Duration: Half day (3 to 4 hours) or full day (6 hours), depending on group needs
- Delivery: Face-to-face at your workplace or chosen venue. Remote delivery via Zoom or Microsoft Teams is also available
- Certificate: CPD-accredited Care and Support Planning Certificate
- Validity: No formal expiry. Refresher recommended in line with organisational policy, regulatory changes, and staff development needs
- Group size: Maximum 15 learners per trainer
Who This Course Is For
This course is right for anyone involved in writing, delivering, or reviewing care and support plans across health and social care settings.
- Care assistants and support workers
- Senior care staff and team leaders
- Care coordinators and key workers
- Health and social care managers and supervisors
- New starters working through induction who need a grounding in care planning from the start
It works across residential care, domiciliary care, supported living, and community-based services. For teams where documentation standards need strengthening after inspection feedback or internal audit, it works equally well as a structured refresher. If your team also needs dedicated focus on capacity and best interests decision-making, our Mental Capacity Act and DoLS Training covers that ground and pairs naturally with this course.
Why Organisations Book With Prima Cura
Most training providers arrive with a course. We arrive with yours.
Before the day, we gather information about your workplace: your incident reporting forms, your internal procedures, and the specific hazards your team actually faces. On the day, your trainer works that into every scenario, every discussion, every practical exercise. If your staff work in a care home, they’re not practising on hypothetical office workers. If your team are lone workers, that context shapes how the session runs.
It means the training lands. Not because it was well-delivered in a generic sense, but because it was relevant to the people in the room and the situations they’ll actually encounter.
A few other things that matter to the organisations that book with us:
- 98.9% learner satisfaction across all Prima Cura courses
- All trainers hold Enhanced DBS certificates and maintain ongoing CPD
- We advise on the qualification level at the enquiry stage. If a different course is a better fit for your workforce, we’ll say so before you book, not after
We respond to all enquiries within one working day.
What Learners Will Be Able to Do
By the end of the course, learners will be able to:
- Explain what care and support planning is and why it matters legally and practically
- Apply person-centred and strengths-based approaches to planning
- Identify what information must be included in a care plan and why each element matters
- Support individuals to be actively involved in their own care planning
- Understand the role of consent, capacity, and best interests in the planning process
- Recognise how risk assessment links to and informs care planning
- Contribute meaningfully to the review and updating of care plans
- Use care plans as a working tool to guide safe, consistent daily care
- Apply recording and documentation standards to care plan entries
- Understand how care planning connects to safeguarding responsibilities
What the Day Covers
All content reflects the Care Act 2014, CQC Regulation 9: Person-Centred Care, the CQC Single Assessment Framework, and current Skills for Care guidance throughout. Content is adapted to your setting and organisational context, but typically covers:
- What care and support planning involves and why it exists
- The difference between needs assessment and care planning
- Legal and regulatory framework
- The CQC Single Assessment Framework and what inspectors look for in care plans
- Person-centred and strengths-based approaches in planning practice
- Key features of a good, usable care plan
- Roles and responsibilities in writing, delivering, and reviewing plans
- Involving individuals, families, advocates, and multi-agency partners
- Consent, capacity, and best interests in care planning decisions
- Balancing risk and rights: positive risk-taking within a care plan
- Confidentiality, data protection, and information handling
- Reviewing, updating, and ensuring continuity of care
- Common documentation errors and how to avoid them
- How care plans support safeguarding and safe care delivery
Every course is also built to include your organisation’s care planning documentation systems, your escalation routes, and your specific regulatory context as standard.
How the Course Is Delivered
This course is delivered face-to-face wherever possible. Care planning is practical work, and the most useful learning happens when staff can discuss real situations, look at real documentation challenges, and work through scenarios that reflect the people they actually support. Face-to-face delivery makes that possible in a way that remote sessions can only partially replicate.
Remote delivery via Zoom or Microsoft Teams is available for teams where logistics make face-to-face impractical. Both formats are fully interactive. Remote delivery is a live session with the same discussion and trainer engagement as the room-based version, not a recorded module.
Delivery includes:
- Clear explanation of the legal and regulatory framework, without the jargon
- Practical discussion grounded in real care situations, not generic textbook examples
- Reflective exercises connecting the learning directly to staff roles and the people they support
- Coverage of your documentation systems and care planning formats
- Time for questions, because care planning generates them at every level of experience
Why Care and Support Training Matters
The Care Act 2014 places wellbeing at the heart of care and support. Its statutory guidance is clear: the assessment and planning process must be a genuine conversation about people’s needs and how meeting those needs can help them achieve the outcomes that matter to them. That is not a box-ticking exercise. It is a legal expectation.
Under CQC Regulation 9: Person-Centred Care, providers must ensure care and treatment is personalised for each individual, based on assessed needs and preferences, with the person involved in the planning, management, and review of their care. Under the CQC Single Assessment Framework, inspectors look for evidence that care plans fully reflect people’s physical, mental, emotional, and social needs, including those related to protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010. Regulation 17: Good Governance adds a further layer: records must be accurate and up to date, and providers must be able to demonstrate quality and improvement. A care plan that has drifted from reality is a governance failure as much as a care failure.
Where individuals lack the capacity to make specific decisions, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 requires that any decisions made on their behalf are in their best interests and use the least restrictive option. Care plans must reflect that process, and staff must understand what that means in practice.
Poor or generic care plans carry real consequences: unmet needs, inconsistent care across shifts, missed or poorly managed risk, safeguarding concerns where needs haven’t been properly identified, and regulatory findings that affect ratings across multiple key questions. This training helps staff move from completing care plans to genuinely owning them.
Certification and Validity
On completion, learners receive a CPD-accredited Care and Support Planning Certificate.
There is no formal expiry, but refresher training is recommended to maintain consistency in care planning and documentation across the team, to keep knowledge current when legislation or regulatory expectations change, and to support new starters from the outset. For teams where inspection feedback or internal audit has identified gaps, a structured refresher is one of the most direct ways to address those findings.
Where We Deliver
We deliver in-house training at your workplace or chosen venue across Manchester, Greater Manchester, and the wider North West. We also deliver nationally across England, including North England, South England, London, and Surrey. All sessions are led by experienced Prima Cura Training instructors.
Every trainer holds an Enhanced DBS certificate.
FAQs
What is care and support planning?
It is the process of identifying an individual’s needs, preferences, strengths and outcomes, and documenting how those needs will be met in a way that is personal to them. Under the Care Act 2014, the planning process must be a genuine conversation with the individual, not a professional assessment done to them. A well-written care plan guides day-to-day care in practice. It tells staff what the person needs, how they want to be supported, what risks exist and what matters most to them. It is a working document, not an archive.
Why is care planning important for CQC inspections?
The CQC looks closely at care plans under Regulation 9 and the Single Assessment Framework’s person-centred care quality statement. Inspectors assess whether plans are genuinely personalised, clearly documented, regularly reviewed and actively used to guide care. Under the updated framework, they also look for evidence that plans reflect protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010. Generic, outdated or staff-centred plans are a consistent source of inspection findings and can affect ratings across the Safe, Effective and Responsive key questions.
Can this training be tailored to our organisation?
Yes. The course can be adapted to reflect your documentation systems, care planning formats, the needs of the people you support and any specific regulatory feedback you’ve received. Whether you run a care home, a domiciliary care service, a supported living service or a community-based setting, the principles are consistent, but the application is different. We make sure the training reflects the world your staff actually work in.
Related Courses
Book or Enquire
To book this course or request a quote for your team, use the enquiry form on this page or contact us directly. Tell us your team size, your sector, and your preferred dates. We’ll come back with a quote and any advice on qualification level if you need it.
We respond to all enquiries within one working day.
Our Commitment to Quality and Compliance
At Prima Cura Training, all courses reflect current UK guidance and best practice. All trainers are experienced professionals with relevant qualifications and ongoing CPD. Because many of the organisations we support work with vulnerable individuals, all trainers hold Enhanced DBS checks.
This course is reviewed against updates from the Care Quality Commission, Skills for Care, and current UK legislation, including the Care Act 2014, the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.
You can read more on our Quality Assurance and Compliance page.
Reviewed by Stephanie Austin, Owner and Lead Trainer, Prima Cura Training | 25+ years in health and social care | 15+ years as a trainer | Last reviewed: April 2026 | Next review: April 2027
This page is for general guidance only and reflects current UK legislation and best practice at the date of review. It does not constitute legal advice. This course provides guidance on care and support planning principles and practice in health and social care settings. It does not replace organisational policies, supervision, or regulatory responsibilities. Providers remain responsible for ensuring care delivery meets current UK legislation and CQC expectations.
