Care Certificate, Standard 3 of 15
Duty of care
What duty of care is and how it arises, the tension between duty of care and a person's right to make risky choices, complaints as information rather than threat, incidents and near misses, and the duty of candour when something goes wrong.
Why this standard matters in practice
Duty of care is the most misused phrase in the sector, usually to justify stopping someone doing what they want. The standard teaches the real legal shape of it: enabling informed risk, not preventing all risk.
How it is assessed
The knowledge in this standard is assessed by a knowledge check, which you can take here as part of the Care Certificate course. Attempts are unlimited and marking happens on our servers, so the answers are never sent to the browser.
Your employer's assessor must also observe you applying it in practice before this standard is complete. That is how the Care Certificate is designed, and it is the reason a purely online Care Certificate does not exist however it is advertised.
Questions about Standard 3
Does duty of care mean stopping people taking risks?
No. Adults with capacity have the right to make decisions others consider unwise. Duty of care means the risk is understood, discussed, mitigated where the person agrees, and recorded, not that the choice is overridden. Overriding a capacitous choice is where providers end up in legal trouble.
What is the duty of candour?
The statutory duty to be open and honest when care goes wrong: telling the person promptly, apologising, explaining what happened and what will change. An apology is not an admission of liability, and the law was written that way deliberately so that honesty is safe.