Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to support social care workers to use their career experience to support their qualifications as NHS workers.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have institutional autonomy to set their own admissions criteria to healthcare profession qualifying courses. Some HEIs accredit prior experiential learning (APEL), including from working in social care, which helps reduce the time it takes to achieve a qualification in a healthcare profession working in the National Health Service. This will vary by HEI and course.

NHS England is leading a programme of work to standardise the approach to APEL across the country and maximise the opportunity from shortened programmes to deliver more professionals more quickly.