Do you need a licence to be a carer?

A nurse or a midwife has to be on the register kept by the Nursing and Midwifery Council, and a social worker has to be on the register kept by Social Work England, or the Scottish Social Services Council if they work in Scotland. Struck off either register, they cannot lawfully do the job. Nothing equivalent exists for a care or support worker. In England, no body issues a personal licence to someone providing personal care, however experienced they are. In Scotland, most paid care workers do have to register with the Scottish Social Services Council, but a personal assistant employed directly by the person they support is exempt from that requirement too, so a privately arranged carer ends up in much the same position across the country.

What does have to register is the business, not the person, when care is arranged through an agency rather than directly. A care or nursing agency delivering regulated personal care has to register with the Care Quality Commission in England, and answer to it for the standard of care it provides. Do self-employed carers need to be registered with the CQC? covers when an individual carer is caught by that requirement rather than exempt from it, which is usually only when they are effectively running an agency of their own.

PrimeCarers is not a care agency and is not registered with the CQC either. It introduces families to self-employed carers, and does not provide, manage or deliver the care itself, so the responsibility for a licence never sits with PrimeCarers in the way it would with an agency.

The Care Certificate was introduced in April 2015 by Health Education England, Skills for Care and Skills for Health, replacing an older induction framework, after the Cavendish Review into care scandals recommended a shared standard for anyone new to the job. It was updated in March 2025 to 16 standards, adding the standard above on learning disability and autism. Skills for Care describes it as a recommended, non-accredited framework, which is the technical way of saying no law requires anyone to complete it.

Most employers expect a new care worker to work through it in their first twelve weeks, and the Care Quality Commission expects a registered provider to show its staff are competent for the role, without naming the Care Certificate as the only way to prove that. A newer, accredited Level 2 Adult Social Care Certificate qualification now sits alongside it for anyone who wants a formal qualification rather than an induction framework, together with the older Level 2 and Level 3 Diploma in Adult Care. None of these is compulsory for a private carer working directly for a family, and none of them is a licence. They are training, and training is worth asking about even though nothing forces a carer to hold it. (Checked against skillsforcare.org.uk on 5 September 2026.)

Asking these questions works whether you are talking to an agency about the carers on its rota or to a private carer directly. An agency should be able to tell you its basic training length and how many of its carers hold the Care Certificate or a diploma without hesitating, because it is asked constantly. A private carer should be just as ready to answer, and a carer who has completed PrimeCarers' own interview has already talked through their experience once, which is a reasonable start but not a substitute for your own questions.

PrimeCarers is an introductory service, not a care agency and not registered with the CQC. Every self-employed carer's identity, right to work and enhanced DBS certificate are checked, and the certificate is kept current on the DBS Update Service, before their profile ever appears, alongside an online interview. Background checks on a private carer sets out what each of those four checks confirms and what it does not, and do private carers need a DBS check? goes further into the certificate on its own.

What is not checked is training, qualifications or what a previous client thought. Those sit on a carer's own profile for you to read, and asking about them directly is the part of checking a carer that a licence would never have covered anyway. How to check a private carer walks through the whole process, checks and your own questions together, step by step. If you are considering employing a carer directly, employing a private carer sets out the duties that become yours instead, and private carer insurance covers what protects you if something goes wrong while they work.