National Care Group is committed to ensuring our workforce has the right skills and knowledge to provide safe, compassionate and informed support to autistic people and people with a learning disability. 

The Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism is named after Oliver McGowan, whose death highlighted the need for the health and social care workforce to receive better training. The Health and Care Act 2022 introduced a statutory requirement that CQC-registered providers must ensure their employees receive learning disability and autism training appropriate to their role.     

The Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training is the standardised training that was developed for this purpose and is the preferred and recommended training for health and social care professionals. 

National Care Group recognises the need for and the benefits of having people with lived experience inform and lead the delivery of this training. We are fully committed to implementing the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training programme in line with the recommended guidelines and prescribed methodology.

We have already delivered Tier 1 training to 100% of our colleagues and, since the announcement of the Tier 2 and Tier 3 expectations, have established our rollout programme to achieve compliance across the group.

Together, our sector can prevent the many avoidable deaths like Oliver’s from happening again.

Last updated October 2025.