The Learning & Development Support Scheme (LDSS) lets eligible adult social care employers in England reclaim the cost of a defined list of training and qualifications for their staff. For many providers it makes the mandatory suite effectively free — but the claim has rules, and a window you can miss.
Who qualifies
You must be a CQC-registered adult social care provider, or a provider drawing down through a local authority route, and be registered with the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS). Staff must be in a directly employed, eligible role. Personal assistants and some other roles have their own routes. If you are registered with ASC-WDS and CQC, you are most of the way there.
What is claimable
LDSS covers a specified list — the Care Certificate, a range of Level 2 and 3 qualifications, and named units and courses. Not everything you buy is claimable, so the practical trick is to build the team's training plan from the claimable list first, and treat anything outside it as a deliberate extra rather than an accidental cost.
The three-month window
This is where providers lose money. A claim must be submitted within three months of the course completion date, with the evidence the scheme specifies — completion, cost, and the staff member's details. Complete a course, forget for a quarter, and the money is gone. The fix is to claim as you go, not in an annual scramble.
How to make it painless
Keep ASC-WDS up to date, pick claimable courses by default, and let the training record produce the claim evidence for you. Our employer portal assembles LDSS claim packs from records you already hold and flags completions before the three-month window closes — so the reclaim happens on time, every time.
Use the 60-second eligibility checker to see what your service could reclaim, then book the mandatory suite knowing most of it comes back.
