Under our legislation, (The Health and Professions Order 2001), we have a right to request that a registrant has undertaken continuing professional development (CPD) and has maintained a written record, including any supporting evidence of that CPD.
CPD is the way in which registrants continue to learn and develop throughout their careers so they keep their skills and knowledge up–to-date and are able to practise safely and effectively.
We do not ask for a set format for recording your CPD. You might choose to keep a binder or folder including documents such as certificates and notes that you have kept relating to your CPD, or you might keep this record electronically. You might follow a format provided by your professional body or by your employer. Please make sure that you can access your record – for example, should you leave your employer.
You can then either add your activities individually in the ‘Activities’ section of the portal or upload one document that lists all your CPD activities over the previous two years (the length of each registration cycle). You will need to explain any gaps of three or more consecutive months.
You can complete a wide range of activities in order to meet the standards of Continuing Professional Development. Our assessors will be looking for a range of activities and evidence of how your learning outcomes have been achieved from those activities. You will need to demonstrate how these activities benefitted you and your service user. Click here to view a list of possible CPD activities.
Your CPD must include a mixture of different types of learning. This means that you need to undertake at least two or more different types of learning activity. In practice, most registrants will undertake many different types of learning whilst registered with us.
If you only demonstrate one type of learning – for example, if you had only read professional journals but had not undertaken any other kind of learning – you would not meet standard 2.
You do not need to send us evidence for every CPD activity listed in your profile. However we ask you to provide us with evidence which shows that the CPD activities you have written about in your statement have taken place. Click here to view types of evidence you may wish to include.
For the purposes of the standards for CPD, a service user is someone who uses or is affected by a registrant’s practice.
All registrants irrespective of whether they work full-time, part-time, on a permanent or locum basis are required to meet the Standards (if they wish to remain registered and use the protected title) with the onus being on the individual to select which CPD activities best suit them and will allow them to meet the standards.
We do not set a number of hours or points that you have to complete and we do not ‘approve’ or ‘endorse’ any CPD activities. Instead, we are much more interested in the outcomes of your learning and how this has benefited your practice and the service users you work with.
This information relates to any registrant considering remaining registered whilst on a career break. A registrant can take a break of up to two years and remain on the Register. In practise, this means that in order to renew your registration (which happens every two years) you need to have practised your profession at some point during the two year registration period which is coming to an end. This enables you to sign your professional declaration to say that you have 'practised your profession since your last renewal'.
We agreed this to take account of the fact that many registrants need to take a break in their practice in order to, for example, care for children or other relations. We randomly audit registrants to ensure that they meet our CPD standards, and if you are on a two year break from practice when you are audited, you can write to us and request that your audit be deferred, if you wish. Then, when you begin practising again, you can re-commence your CPD, and keep a record of it, ready for when you are audited the next time (which would happen automatically after a deferral).
If you are out of practice for more than two years, then we recommend that you should come off the Register, and reapply for registration when you wish to practise again. While you are not registered, there are obviously no CPD requirements for you to fulfil. More information about coming off the Register and applying for readmission to the Register can be found on our website.
To request a deferral with supporting evidence please click here
If you are selected for audit but are unable to participate because of your circumstances, you can ask us to defer your audit. This might be because of a serious illness, a bereavement or maternity leave.
We will ask you to submit evidence of why you are unable to participate. We will want to make sure that it will be fair to you and to the other registrants who have been audited to defer your audit. If your audit is deferred, you will be automatically chosen for audit when your profession next renews its registration.
It is your choice about whether to apply for deferral. For example, you may feel that you are able to take part in an audit even if you have been on maternity leave or sick leave for a significant part of the two year registration cycle. If this in the case, you could choose to take part in the audit and make your circumstances clear in your profile.
To request a deferral with supporting evidence please click here
File types that can uploaded are JPG, GIF, PDF, DOCX, XLSX, TIFF, PNG, TXT, PPT, PPTX, RTF, BMP, DOC and XLS. The maximum file size for each document upload is 25MB.
You do not have to be a member of a professional body in order to meet the HCPC's Standards for CPD. There are number of different CPD activities you can carry out that involve different types of learning.
Yes, CPD activities undertaken outside the UK can also be included in your CPD profile, provided they are relevant to your practice.
All registrants who have been selected for audit are required to submit a profile showing how they have met the standards for continuing professional development (CPD). The CPD assessors will review your profile. If you have not fully met all the standards; you will have access to an assessment report explaining why and asking you to submit further information in relation to the standards which have not been met. You will then be given a deadline to submit the required further information.
If you are asked to provide further information and your profile still does not meet the standards, you may be given additional time to meet the shortfalls. If, after the additional time, you still do not meet our standards, your name may be removed from the Register.
If that happens, you have a right of appeal against the decision. If you decide to appeal, your name will remain on the Register until the appeals process has concluded.
Although our legislation, (Health and Social Work Professions Order 2001), gives us the power to, for example, protect professional titles, it does not give us any legal power to require employers to dedicate particular time or resources to CPD.
However we do encourage employers to support their staff in regards to CPD. We have no powers to provide funding for CPD or insist that employers fund CPD.
We hope that through our communications campaign, employers will become aware of the substantial benefits of supporting their staff. In addition, this will have benefits in service delivery, recruitment and retention. Employers should be aware that CPD is compulsory for registrants and in turn support their staff, however ultimately it is the registrant’s responsibility to ensure they dedicate time to CPD and ensure their CPD is recorded
In the summary section we would expect to see up to 500 words, however this is not a set limit and you may find you write slightly above or below this number of words. In this section we ask you to describe your role and the type of work you do. In the statement section we would expect to see up to 1,500 words, however this is not a set limit and you may find you write slightly above or below this number of words. In this section we ask you to draw on the CPD activities to show us how you meet the standards.
There is a word and character count that appear on the text boxes. Please note that the following text boxes have character limits:
Profile Summary - 7,000 characters
Profile Statement - 20,000
Further Information - 20,000
Further Time - 20,000
Deferral - 5,000
It is important to check your profile thoroughly before submitting including that you have uploaded the correct documents as you will be unable to make changes to your profile once submitted. If there are any problems with your profile we will let you know and at this stage you would be able to edit the profile.
