Care academy reveals a quarter of its carers have a disability
Following the discovery, Embark Learning Care Academy are now championing for more people with a disability to be given equal opportunities.
It’s no secret that the last few years have perhaps been the hardest for social care. The continued cost-of-living crisis and the global pandemic forced thousands of carers out of their roles. According to the most recent statistics from The Kings Fund, in 2022/23, the vacancy rate in adult social care was the second highest it has been since Skills for Care began collecting data in 2012/13. Some of the main reasons for people leaving the sector include underappreciation, lack of decent pay and uncertainty of career development – especially for those who have a disability.
However, Embark Learning Care Academy, an intuition that provides carers with high-quality training, is working to change this. In lieu of UK Cares Week, which took place from 10th-16th June 2024, the academy published new data which revealed a quarter of its carers have a disability, whether this be learning, mental or physical. With this in mind, the organisation are now tailoring some of their programmes to ensure that, despite current environmental pressures, carers with a disability always feel they will be offered equal chances.
Since August 2023, Embark has trained 1,076 carers with 938 of those now employed in the care sector: out of the 1,076 learners, 25% of them had a disability.
‘We’d rather find out if our learners have a disability, purely to ensure that if we need to adapt our teaching style, we can and will. The disabilities our learners have doesn’t have to impact their learning at all, and we make sure that everyone is treated the same, and learn the same material so that all can become qualified carers, which is what they’re on our course to become,’ Alex O’Neill, operations director at Embark Learning Care Academy, said. ‘We train hundreds of people each year and one of the benefits of our courses is the confidence it gives people. We have people from all different backgrounds and walks of life and they come to us so that they can train in a different career, and that’s what we help them with.’
O’Neill added: ‘We have a lot of people who lack in self-confidence, whether that be because they’ve been out of work for years or they have a disability, but we give them the opportunity to learn and grow and we hope that they come out of our courses a happier and more confident person, which I’m pleased to say, most of them do.’
As it stands, Embark offers more than 100 mandatory, recommended, clinical and train the trainer courses in health and social care. It’s most popular course is ‘Step into Care’ which is a four-week accredited programme that is completely free of charge.
Following training courses completion, Fairway Homecare – who have partnered with Embark – help place carers into an environment that will best suit their needs. They do this by setting up meetings with the newly qualified individuals.
Image: Embark Learning Care Academy
Over 1,000 carers have completed their training in Birmingham
