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What the Care Workforce Pathway actually looks like when you use it

Kevin Humphrys, CEO, Oakland Care Group, shares his experience of using the Care Workforce Pathway.

We stopped using "care worker" at Oakland Care Group a couple of years ago. Some people thought it was just window dressing – a title change that wouldn't survive contact with reality. We realise that’s a fair challenge, so let me tell you what happened next.

When the Government launched the Care Workforce Pathway in January 2024, we took note. Not because we needed permission to do what we were already doing – we'd been building our own career framework since 2023 – but because, for the first time, the sector had something it had never had before. A universal career structure setting out the knowledge, skills, values and behaviours required at every level. And that really matters.

What the Pathway is – and isn't

For anyone who hasn't come across it yet, the Care Workforce Pathway was developed by the Department of Health and Social Care in partnership with 微微草视频. It launched with four direct care role categories, with four more – enhanced care worker, personal assistant, deputy manager, and registered manager – being added in April 2025. New categories, including nominated individual, activity coordinator, and care technologist, are in development.

The Pathway doesn't tell you what to call your staff. It doesn't prescribe a single organisational structure. What it does is define – clearly, for the first time – what people in different roles need to know, what they need to be able to do, and how they should behave while doing it. Each role category can cover a range of job titles. That flexibility is deliberate, and it's what makes adoption practical for organisations of different sizes and structures.

How we used it

We took the Pathway and held it up against our existing framework. The alignment was remarkable – not because we'd copied anything, but because we'd arrived at similar conclusions independently. When you take the work seriously, you tend to end up in similar places.

Where the Pathway really helped was in refining what we'd built. We mapped every Oakland Care Group role to a Pathway category. Our Care Practitioner aligns to "new to care." Our Care Practitioner (M) – the tier where medication administration begins – maps to "care or support worker." Our Advanced Care Practitioners span both "care or support worker" and "enhanced care worker," depending on level. Senior Care Practitioners sit within "supervisor or leader". Lead Practitioner maps to "practice leader." Deputy Manager and Registered Manager align directly.

That mapping exercise forced us to look hard at our job descriptions. Not just the titles, the actual content. Were the knowledge requirements clear? Were the skills expectations specific enough? Did the qualifications and experience thresholds make sense against a national framework?

In several cases, they needed tightening. We rewrote job descriptions for every role, from entry-level care practitioner through to registered manager. Each one now reflects both our internal expectations and the Pathway's knowledge and skills breakdown for the corresponding role category. When our team at Oakland Grange recruits a new Advanced Care Practitioner Level 3, the job description connects seamlessly to the practice leader category. Staff can see where they are, where they're going, and what they need to get there.

Values – not a poster on the wall

The Pathway's values were co-produced with people who draw on care and support, through work led by Think Local Act Personal. Seven value statements emerged from that process, and they now underpin every role category.

We adopted those values and wove them into our own framework: kind; compassionate and empathetic; honest; trustworthy and reliable; respect; courageous and principled; see the whole person; flexible, open and learning; proud and positive.

These inform recruitment – every interview includes values-based questions. They shape supervision conversations. They appear in appraisals. When the team at Oakland Court has a development discussion with one of their Senior Care Practitioners, the conversation starts with values and works outward from there.

I'll be frank - values frameworks only work if leadership models them. If you write them on a poster, pin it to the staff room wall, and carry on as before – nothing changes. Live them visibly, hold yourself accountable to them publicly, and staff pick up on it quickly. So do families.

What comes next

The Pathway gives us two things we're actively building on.

We're using the knowledge and skills breakdowns to design individual learning plans for staff at every level. Not generic training schedules – targeted development that connects what someone needs to learn now with where they want to be in twelve or twenty-four months. The Learning and Development Support Scheme, backed by up to £10 million for 2026–27, helps fund eligible courses and qualifications. We're using it. Every care provider should be.

Then there's succession planning. With an estimated 10,000 registered managers due to retire in the next fifteen years, this isn't a nice to have. We're identifying staff with leadership potential early and mapping their development against the Deputy Manager and Registered Manager role categories. Our Lead Practitioners and Deputy Managers in our homes are exactly the kind of professionals this sector needs in its next generation of leaders. The Pathway gives us a common language to support that progression.

We've also gone further than the Pathway in certain areas. Our framework includes a distinct medication administration competency tier – the Care Practitioner (M) – because we believe medication management is too significant a responsibility to fold into a general role description. We've integrated digital systems training across every level, ensuring staff are proficient with Nourish, Coolcare, CareSpace, and Nobi from the point of induction. The Pathway references digital skills, but our approach is specific to the platforms our teams use daily.

The honest assessment

The Care Workforce Pathway is still developing to ensure it meets the needs of the sector. It doesn’t address specialist learning opportunities, such as mental health and it can’t fix the pay crisis or change public perception on its own. But it's a genuine step forward. For the first time, a care practitioner joining our team can see a nationally recognised structure that validates their skills, maps their development, and connects their career to a framework that transcends any single employer.

We started this work before the Pathway existed. We'll keep going regardless of where it gets to. But we'll use every part of it that helps our people grow – because honestly, they've earned that and then some.

Find out more about the Care Workforce Pathway.

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