Distinguished Care Group chosen to lead the 1st national conference celebrating and promoting the Govt workforce development pathway initiative ‘Shaping tomorrow, together’
The Director and Nominated Individual for the Distinguished Care Group was honoured to be invited to represent social care on an expert panel of three at the 1st national conference promoting the new workforce development pathway
The pathway, the first national standard setting of skills and requirements for roles within care begun construction in 2024, in 2025 when the Distinguished care group was formed, we became what is known as a pioneer and helped to develop and embed these national skillsets into both our workforce and more broadly, into mainstream practice
During the first year of formation the Care Workforce Pathway offered the new group a clear framework to support consistency and quality. From the outset, existing HR, recruitment, and onboarding processes were reviewed and standardised. All job descriptions and contracts were mapped to the Pathway, allowing the group to retire outdated roles, introduce new ones, and create clear, consistent expectations for staff. These systematic changes also allowed the group to review its recruitment practices and to create new opportunities to uplift its entire offer
Paul TM Smith, Director and NI said “The Pathway gave us the structure we needed to bring three previously separate services together under a single, coherent identity. Mapping our roles to the Pathway helps us harmonise expectations, strengthen our workforce structure, and raise standards across every service.”
Once roles and expectations were unified, the group were able to introduce new approaches to supervision and appraisal processes and used the newly mapped job descriptions to support further uplifts in recruitment, retention and care quality. The group further introduced new learning and development opportunities in order to support all staff to meet the expectations required and started to have one-to-one career conversations to help take this forward. The new learning opportunities strengthened the new roles and as a result the organisation grew both clinically and managerially stronger.
The Pathway was adopted during a period of significant organisational change however end of first year satisfaction surveys confirmed a significant rise in satisfaction across all groups surveyed – residents, families, friends and advocates, workforce and visiting professionals and across all locations with the most outstanding uplift at the Thomas Knight duel registered care home
Here at Distinguished Care, you can be assured that the workforce supporting you or your loved one are qualified to do so and developed to the highest national standards.
Click Here to read the Distinguished Care case study published on the skills for care website
The video of the entire conference topped and tailed by the minister for social care Stephen Kinnock MP and Oonagh Smyth CBE Chief Executive Officer of Skills for Care is available on the skills for care and DoH websites and is also available to watch below.
‘The Care Workforce Pathway is a comprehensive framework designed to clearly define careers in adult social care, detailing the knowledge, skills, values, and behaviours essential for delivering high-quality, personalised care and support.
The Care Workforce Pathway clearly sets out what a career in social care means and the level of knowledge, experience and skills required to deliver high-quality, personalised, care and support. It is the first universal career structure for the adult social care workforce, which sets out the knowledge, skills, values and behaviours needed to work in adult social care.
Our ‘Care Workforce Pathway: Shaping tomorrow, together’ event on Thursday 19 February 2026 celebrated the progress made so far and looked at how the Pathway is shaping the future of the sector. Watch the recording to gain practical insights, hear real success stories, and learn about future developments to help inform and inspire Pathway adoption in your own organisation. This event included a keynote address delivered via video by the Minister of State for Care, which does not form part of this recording’.