With the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic across the country, it will be necessary for health and social care staff to be deployed to work in frontline care services they may be unfamiliar with. Temporary workers and volunteers are also being recruited to support services.

The Open University’s Early Childhood team and the Scottish Government have developed a free online course, Identifying and supporting additional support needs in early learning and childcare, for early learning and childcare (ELC) practitioners.  

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has created uncertainty for social work students so we’ve agreed contingency plans with the Heads of Social Work Programmes in Scotland to help mitigate the impact on them.

Another 98 Dementia Champions and 45 Dementia Specialist Improvement Leads (DSIL) will graduate today from specialist dementia training programmes aimed at improving the care and support for people living with dementia in Scottish hospitals, care homes and community settings.

From this autumn universities will be embedding the revised Standards in Social Work Education in their social work programmes.

SSSC Open Badges are now five-years old.  To celebrate, Robert Stewart, lead officer for SSSC Open Badges, tells us more about what's coming up this year.

Do you have an apprentice or are you thinking about employing an apprentice? 

Early learning and childcare (ELC) staff are receiving new help to inspire young children in science and maths. 

A new science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning package, developed in partnership with the Scottish Government and the University of the West of Scotland, provides multimedia resources and activities for staff to help babies and children to develop curiosity in the world around them. 

We’ve worked with Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) and NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to produce a new leaflet to help you understand and raise awareness of the Part Time Fee Grant.

We’ve published a new Enriching and Improving Experience: Palliative and End of Life Care Guidance Toolkit.

We’ve produced a new presentation with accompanying notes to help you facilitate a discussion around effective supervision.

We’ve produced a new ebook to help you create content and develop open badges for your learning.

Our 23 Digital Capabilities learning resource has been incredibly popular since it was launched and we’ve received lots of requests from organisations to help create their own online learning using the 23 Things framework.