Caritas Trains Professional Caregivers

The key to providing high quality services is making sure our workers and volunteers are professionally trained and educated according to the latest standards.

Training and qualifying experts is an important part of what we do at Caritas.(c) DCV

Our staff receive foundational and continuing theoretical education and practical training at Caritas’ more than 600 technical colleges and universities of applied sciences in Germany.

Caritas’ continuing education academies specialising in classes for working professionals are another important part of our education and training system. The courses offered at these academies help to continually improve the quality of Caritas’ social work. They successfully combine theory with practice and offer a forum of exchange which frequently provides the German Caritas Association with new ideas. Subjects such as social policy, association policies, management, values, human resources development, organisational development, social work, counselling, education and didactics are taught and discussed in conferences, courses, workshops and seminars.

Continuous Quality Assurance and Improvement

In our centres and institutions, we set our quality standards high to ensure that the services we provide are the best possible and can meet the growing demands made on professionals. We therefore continuously improve and develop our quality standards.

The German Caritas Association promotes the professionalisation of charitable work in its publicity campaigns, publications and information management and in the training and educating of staff in foundational subjects.

We conduct an ongoing benchmarking study of many departments within the Association in which they review their own structures. In this process, the figures and data of several centres and institutions are compared in order to set targets and priorities and identify areas of improvement. Benchmarking groups then interpret and discuss the results of the review. They look for solutions that make adjustments for the continual decrease in funding from the government and the Church without having to make cuts in quality. Their primary goal is to secure and strengthen the position of Caritas institutions in the competitive market of the social care sector.