Since its launch in 1999 by Dr Angela Brown, Training in Care has provided training to over 35,000 people seeking to enter or progress in the UK’s care sector.
The company is now expanding its presence overseas after signing an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a leading care provider in Kerala, India, supported by innovation programme funding from the BIC.
Challenge
Faced with a crippling skills shortage, the UK care sector requires over 100,000 workers to address the nation’s care needs.
Training in Care, a leading provider of training to care workers, has helped tens of thousands of people enter or progress in the sector, however the scale of the UK’s social care crisis has resulted in training providers having to do even more to attract new talent into the sector.
Innovation project
Training in Care signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Guardian Angels, a leading care provider in Kerala, India, to share best practice and help alleviate skills shortages in both nations.
A key objective of the MoU was for Training in Care to demonstrate how its successful approach to training and upskilling the workforce could help care providers in India, but to achieve this, it needed to develop a new digital Learning Platform which was accessible and tailored to the needs of end-users in markets outside of the UK.
Amount received
£6,800
Grant impact
The grant contributed towards the development cost of the Learning Platform which, as well as enabling Training in Care to export its platform to customers in overseas markets, has also helped the company refine its domestic product offering in the UK.
Without the support, the owner-led business would have had to invest significant time and money into developing the platform, potentially taking resource away from the company’s core offering which is vital to the growth of the UK care sector.
Additional support
While the grant was key in enabling Training in Care to develop the new platform, Dr Angela Brown, founder and chief executive, credits the support they received from the BIC’s innovation advisers as being just as impactful, if not more.
“I made a point after the project of letting the BIC know that the support which accompanied the grant was of most value,” she said.
“Although grant funding is always welcome to businesses, the real value here was the advice from the BIC on investing into a learning platform which met the demands of growth in the business.
“The advisers really got to know our business and made it their job to understand what we wanted to achieve through the project.
“This not only enabled them to understand how the grant would be utilised but also to challenge us on aspects we hadn’t even thought of to further refine the solution.”
Key outcomes
The MoU is only in its early stages however the Learning Platform has already been utilised by several parties to huge success.
It has also allowed Training in Care to continue training and upskilling domestic care workers while expanding into India, allowing the business to scale up at a speed which, without the grant, would have been difficult to achieve.