Workforce Development Funding
How to Claim


Must be an Adult Social Care Employer

The Workforce Development Fund (WDF) is a funding stream from the Department of Health disseminated by Skills for Care. It focuses on the achievement of qualification units and supports the ongoing professional development of staff across the adult social care sector.

For employers, accessing WDF significantly contributes towards the costs of workers' completing qualifications on the  Regulated Qualification Framework (RQF) . It can also be used to help fund the delivery of intermediate and advanced level Apprenticeships in social care.


Funding is only available for specific RQF qualifications, as outlined by Skills for Care. You can view the full list of funded qualifications for 2022 / 23 by clicking here.

Must fully complete ASC-WDS

Before we can begin to process any claims for your organisation, you must ensure that all organisational data and Employee data has been inputted onto the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS), formally known as NMDS-SC. For more information on ASC-WDS, please refer to this page.


Alternatively you can click here to download a guidance document

Must complete a Membership Form

If you have previously claimed Workforce Development Funding through the Greater Merseyside Care Partnership you will have been contacted to renew your membership status, if in doubt, please contact LSCP using the details at the bottom of the page.


You must join a Partnership to begin claiming Workforce Development Funding, please ensure you have read our introduction to Workforce Development Funding and when completing your Membership Form, please put the name of the Partnership you are joining as 'Greater Merseyside and Cheshire Workforce Development Fund Partnership'.


It is advised that you fully complete your Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set prior to completing a Membership Form to ensure that all details match. Please note that each ESTABLISHMENT may only join ONE PARTNERSHIP. If you have previously registered your establishment or organisation to a partnership other than the Greater Merseyside Cheshire Workforce Development Fund Partnership (for the purposes of claiming Workforce Development Funding), there will be some further steps to undertake, please contact us for more information.


You should strive to complete as many parts of this form as possible, if required parts of this form are missing, you will not be added to the Partnership and be allowed to submit a claim, if in doubt please contact LSCP.

The additional pages attached to your Membership Form will allow you to quickly add other ASC-WDS establishments using just the establishment name, address and ASC-WDS ID. If you only wish to register 1 establishment you may disregard these additional pages.

Must submit evidence of completed qualification certificates

Please try not to submit evidence for qualifications which are not available to be claimed, for a comprehensive list of those that are available for funding, please refer to this list.


We accept Adult Health and Social Care certificate evidence only and the following information must be included:

If any of this information is missing or incorrect you claim may be delayed or rejected. We will not return any copies of Certificates you have submitted.


Certificates and Qualifications you wish to claim must be fully completed within the extended funding year 01 January 2022 to 31 May 2023


When submitting claims you must also send a Employer Claim Submission Form and include your ASC-WDS ID, should you require a copy of this form please click here or alternatively you can email admin@lscpinfo.co.uk


We advise that you take copies of any evidence prior to sending to LSCP, or submit any certificates electronically so they may be easily stored and recorded, sending to admin@lscpinfo.co.uk


If you choose to submit your evidence through the postal system, we offer the following guidelines:

Claims are reviewed and submitted to Skills for Care

We will review your claim/s and submit to Skills for Care to be ratified.

At LSCP we review and check all claims for Workforce Development Funding before submission this process includes the following steps;

If any of this information listed above is missing we will be in touch to advise how to obtain, please note: missing information can sometimes cause a delay in your claim.

Once all checks are completed and all require information is included we begin the submission process sending details of your claim to Skills for Care. You will receive an notification email confirming what has been submitted.

Funding is received from Skills for Care and disbursed

Once the ratification process has been completed we (LSCP) receive a notification with details of what has successful been claimed for.

We check and compare all information against what was submitted and send each organisation an email detailing what claims have been successful and when applicable any rejected claims and the reason for this.

Once we receive monies from Skills for Care it is then disbursed to successful organisations with an email sent confirming this.


It is an employer’s responsibility to maintain a clear audit trail of funding received and spent for six years. Skills for Care recommend you keep evidence of learning and development funded through WDF because you may be asked confirm details.

Skills for Care Ratification

Once claims have been submitted to Skills for Care this is called the ratification process.

The ratification process takes for approx. 4-6 weeks during which we are not informed about the progress of your claims and can not provide any updates.