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Welcome to the Care Homes Training Programme

The GSF Care Homes Training Programme is the most widely used training programme for all care homes in the UK, supporting all elderly residents as they near the end of their lives. Since its launch in 2004, thousands of care homes have completed the programme, and hundreds have become accredited with the well-recognised GSF Quality Hallmark Award. Over the last 20 years, GSF has provided effective end of life care training for the care team, enabling residents to live well by promoting better working with GPs and the wider community team. Hundreds of thousands of residents have benefited from GSF in their care home enabling more proactive, personalised, well-coordinated care. Demonstrating significant impact with a reduction in unplanned hospital admissions and deaths, enabling more to live and die where they choose. It is estimated that on average 80% of residents are in the last year of life and unplanned hospital admissions of residents could be avoided with care homes playing a pivotal role with an ever increasing aging population quality care is crucial for the sector now, and in the future.  

GSF helps implement national policy in practice. GSF improves proactive, personalised, well-coordinated care, in line with the NHSE Long Term Plan, NICE Guidance, Enhanced Health in Care Homes (EHCH) and supporting GPs’ Quality Outcomes Framework enhancing quality of care for residents and reducing crisis hospital admissions and deaths, whilst providing evidence of impact for CQC and local commissioners. The programme is a tried and tested way of delivering transformational change in line with current best practice. It promotes independence and high-quality integrated care in final days, as well as workforce training and development and the use of technology leading to a more confident team.                                            

The GSF Accreditation Quality Hallmark Award is nationally recognised as a kite-mark for quality, recommended by Care Quality Commission, and co-badged with Care England, National Care Forum, National Care Association, Registered Nursing Home Association, with high numbers of ‘CQC Outstanding’ homes being GSF Accredited. Long term sustainability of the programme has been demonstrated, with care homes are now reaccredited 3, 6, 9 and 12 years on, having achieved accreditation for the 5th time!. In acknowledgment of this, homes and other organisations that achieve re-accreditation received GSF Platinum status.

“We are delighted to be awarded GSF Care Home of the Year 2021! This accolade has been well received by all at Bluebirds and the wider team at PJ Care. After nearly a decade of sustaining this well-respected accreditation, it has highlighted that GSF has significantly contributed to the high quality of care we provide to our residents, both in the end stages of life and when promoting a quality of life throughout our residents whole journey with us.” Colleen Brothers, Manager at Bluebirds Neurological Care Centre. 

Find out more about the GSF Care Homes Programme below: 

The training includes:

  • 8 Live Webinar Sessions: Each session covers one of the GSF 7 key tasks, sharing good practice and monitoring step-by-step progress.
  • Tools & Resources: Exclusive access to our members area and resources, including teaching materials, posters, videos, leaflets and good practice guides.
  • Measures: Intrinsic evaluations showing benchmarked change and progression over time. The evaluations are at the organisational, resident and staff level and are aligned with national targets to demonstrate change.

There are three different ways to access the programme:

  • Silver programme: Care Homes attend 8 live training webinars (2.5 hours per webinar), there is a webinar every 3 weeks over 6 months.
  • Gold Programme: Care Homes attend 8 live training webinars, there is a webinar every 3 weeks over 6 months. On completion of the training programme the staff give themselves 6 months to embed their learning into practice before applying for accreditation.  
  • Bespoke flexible delivery of the programme nationally for your group of Care Homes (corporate), or for Care Homes within a locality (CCG/ PCN/ ICS footprint).

 The Accreditation Process

There are four parts to the process:

  • Part 1: Key Outcome Ratios - evidence of attainment of standards in key areas over the last year & Resident Audit - After Death Analysis x 5 deaths to demonstrate that GSF is embedded in practice at resident level.
  • Part 2: Portfolio of evidence - statement of how you attain the 7 key tasks with supporting evidence and an action plan for sustainability. 
  • Part 3: Assessment Visit - Visit from The GSF Assessment team to assess implementation, team awareness and long-term sustainability.
  • Part 4: Attendance at the GSF conference to celebrate your success and receive your Quality Hallmark Award. 

GSF training is also provided by our Regional Training Centres (RTC). The Regional Training Centres offer live webinar training or face to face workshops locally: Find an RTC near me 

"The GSF programme represents incredibly good value, builds on 15 years of success involving thousands of care homes, where it has been shown to be transformational, not only for staff but for relatives and residents. GSF helps demystify dying, and encourages everyone to play their part, so staff morale improves and turnover decreases. In enabling better quality care, with better outcomes recognised by CQC, this helps differentiate quality homes from others, making them stand out in this vital area of care.” Martin Green, Chief Executive of Care England

GSF & Skills for Care Qualifications. GSF has mapped its Quality Improvement Training Programmes to Skills for Care qualifications. The qualifications detail the core learning elements for each unit. These units can be built up to help individuals gain QCF (Qualification Credit Framework) credits and CPD (continuing professional development) points. These credits can be used to gain vocational qualifications at Award, Certificate or Diploma level and sometimes used towards higher level qualifications. For further details, follow the link: Skills for Care Mapping Document

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