Duty of Candour & Duty of Care: What the 2025 Care Certificate Adds to Your Responsibilities is more than an update — it signals a stronger, clearer standard for care across the UK. The 2025 refresh marks a move towards greater honesty, safety, and professional accountability in every aspect of care practice.
The new Care Certificate expands the Duty of Candour, making openness and timely communication mandatory after incidents, and reinforces the Duty of Care, ensuring every action protects the wellbeing and rights of those receiving support. Together, these updates define your responsibilities more precisely — focusing on trust, transparency, and accountability in everyday care.
In this article, we’ll unpack what these duties mean, what’s changed in the 2025 standards, and how these updates affect your work. By the end, you’ll gain:
- A clear understanding of the Duty of Candour and Duty of Care
- Insight into the 2025 Care Certificate updates and why they matter
- Practical steps to meet new expectations in everyday care
- Awareness of what regulators now look for
- Access to trusted guidance from official UK sources
What Is the Duty of Candour?
The Duty of Candour is the legal duty to be open and honest when something goes wrong in care. It ensures that people receive clear information, a genuine apology, and support when incidents occur.
According to the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the Duty of Candour requires every care provider to explain what happened, take responsibility, and share what will be done to prevent it happening again. This duty applies to all health and social care organisations registered under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.
In simple terms, it applies to anyone involved in delivering regulated care — from managers to frontline staff. When an error or harm occurs, the Duty of Candour means you must act quickly, communicate honestly, and record your actions accurately.
The process involves four clear steps:
- Inform – Tell the person, or their family, what happened and why.
- Apologise – Offer a sincere apology that recognises the impact.
- Record – Document the conversation and actions taken.
- Support – Provide practical and emotional support to those affected.
This duty builds trust between care providers, service users, and families. It turns openness from an expectation into a professional responsibility, creating safer, more transparent care environments.
What Is the Duty of Care?
The Duty of Care means taking all reasonable steps to keep people safe from harm. It is the moral and legal responsibility to protect the wellbeing, dignity, and rights of those you support.
In practice, this duty protects everyone involved in care — both service users and staff. It ensures that decisions are made thoughtfully, risks are managed properly, and every person receives safe, respectful support. When staff act with care and attention, they not only prevent harm but also build trust and confidence in the service.
The Duty of Care links directly to ethical standards and safeguarding principles. It requires professionals to recognise risks, report concerns, and act before harm occurs. Ignoring potential danger, or failing to speak up, is a breach of this duty.
Example:
If a care worker notices that a resident’s mobility aid is damaged, they must report it, remove it from use, and arrange a replacement before the person is hurt. This is the Duty of Care in action — protecting others through safe, proactive decisions.
This duty is central to Standard 3 of the Care Certificate. It sets out what care workers must understand about their responsibility to the people they support, including how to balance individual rights with safety, how to respond to mistakes, and how to raise concerns.
Together, the Duty of Care and the Duty of Candour create the foundation of professional practice — one focused on honesty, protection, and respect for every person in care.
Duty of Candour & Duty of Care — What the 2025 Care Certificate Adds
The Care Certificate was refreshed in March 2025 by Skills for Care and Skills for Health. This is the first major review since 2015. The update reflects modern care practice and sets clearer expectations around honesty, safety, and professional responsibility.
According to the official Skills for Care Care Certificate Standards (March 2025, PDF), the refreshed framework aligns workforce training with current legislation and regulatory good practice.
The Responsibilities as a Duty of Care
The Duty of Care is your ongoing responsibility to protect the wellbeing, dignity, and rights of every person you support. It applies to all actions and decisions you make while providing care.
In the 2025 Care Certificate, this duty focuses on safe, ethical, and proactive practice. It reminds care workers that safety and respect come before convenience, and that preventing harm is a shared professional commitment.
Your main responsibilities under the Duty of Care include:
- Protect individuals from harm — take all reasonable steps to keep people safe.
- Act in their best interests — make decisions that promote dignity and wellbeing.
- Recognise and report risks — identify hazards or poor practice and act immediately.
- Communicate clearly — share accurate information with colleagues, families, and professionals.
- Record accurately — document actions, decisions, and concerns to maintain transparency.
- Reflect and improve — learn from experiences to raise the quality of care.
- Support colleagues — help others uphold the same standards of safety and respect.
These expectations sit at the heart of Standard 3 in the Care Certificate. They ensure that everyone delivering care understands how personal responsibility supports both safety and trust.
The Responsibilities as a Duty of Candour
The Duty of Candour is now explicitly written into Standard 3 for the first time. It defines how care professionals must act when something goes wrong. This duty promotes honesty, openness, and learning instead of blame.
It applies whenever an incident, error, or harm occurs during care. The focus is on open communication with the person affected, recording events accurately, and taking corrective action.
Your main responsibilities under the Duty of Candour include:
- Acknowledge incidents — recognise when something has gone wrong, even if unintentional.
- Inform the person or their family — explain what happened, why it occurred, and what will be done next.
- Offer a sincere apology — express regret clearly and respectfully.
- Record everything — document the discussion, decisions, and corrective steps.
- Report through proper channels — notify managers or regulators as required.
- Share learning — use the experience to prevent recurrence and support others.
- Encourage openness — help build a culture where honesty is valued and supported.
These steps are designed to strengthen public trust and ensure care services act with integrity. Every worker, from support staff to senior managers, now shares direct accountability for applying these principles.
Practical Impact for Care Workers and Managers
The 2025 Care Certificate changes move beyond theory. They show what openness and accountability look like in real care settings. These updates now shape how daily tasks are carried out — from reporting and communication to record-keeping and staff support.
1. Reporting Incidents
When an incident happens, staff must act quickly and honestly. Report it to your manager or through the organisation’s reporting process. Explain what occurred, who was involved, and what action has been taken. Timely reporting prevents further harm and helps create a culture where people learn, not hide mistakes.
2. Communicating with Families
The Duty of Candour requires clear, compassionate communication. Families must be told when something goes wrong and given honest explanations. Listening to their concerns matters as much as providing answers. This openness helps rebuild trust after an error and shows respect for those affected.
3. Documenting Decisions
Good documentation protects everyone. Record what happened, when, and what decisions were made. Include who was informed and what follow-up action was planned. Accurate records support transparency, evidence accountability, and demonstrate compliance during inspection or review.
4. Supporting New Staff
Managers now have added responsibility under the 2025 standards. They must ensure new workers understand both duties and feel confident applying them. This includes providing induction training, supervision, and feedback. Supportive leadership helps embed openness as part of everyday culture.
Embedding Openness Through Practice
Small, consistent actions build stronger care. Encouraging staff to speak up, reflect on mistakes, and share learning turns policy into daily behaviour. When everyone models transparency, confidence and safety grow across the whole service.
Why Duty of Candour & Duty of Care Matter Now
The 2025 Care Certificate update highlights what regulators, employers, and the public now expect — a culture built on openness, honesty, and responsibility. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has made these values central to how services are inspected and rated. Transparency is no longer optional; it’s seen as a measure of good leadership and safe practice.
When care workers and managers uphold the Duty of Candour and Duty of Care, they protect more than compliance — they protect trust. Families and service users feel safer when they know staff will speak up, take ownership, and act fairly. This honesty also builds professional confidence, helping workers feel supported when things go wrong and recognised when they do the right thing.
Doing the right thing builds safer care environments. It replaces fear with learning, blame with understanding, and silence with communication. These are the foundations of high-quality care and long-term professional growth.
During a busy shift, a support worker accidentally administers a medication late. Instead of hiding the mistake, they inform their supervisor, record the delay, and apologise to the person affected. The manager thanks them for their honesty and reviews how to prevent future errors. This small act of openness demonstrates both duties in action — honesty under pressure and care in response.
The 2025 standards encourage this kind of behaviour every day. By bringing the Duty of Candour into Standard 3 and reinforcing the Duty of Care, the new Care Certificate helps create a sector where integrity defines good practice, not just good policy.
Conclusion
The 2025 Care Certificate strengthens how the Duty of Candour and Duty of Care work together. It turns openness, honesty, and protection from ideals into everyday expectations across the care sector.
By understanding these duties, care professionals can act with confidence, communicate clearly, and build trust through transparency. Real quality care begins with doing the right thing — even when it’s hard.
Care Certificate Course - Standards (1 to 16)
Table of Contents
Frequently Asked Questions
Examples of the Duty of Candour include informing a person or their family if a medication error occurs, if a fall happens under staff supervision, or if treatment is delayed and causes harm. In each case, care workers must be open about what happened, apologise sincerely, and explain what will be done to prevent it from happening again. The focus is always on honesty and learning rather than blame.
The Duty of Care and the Duty of Candour are closely connected. The Duty of Care involves preventing harm by acting safely and responsibly, while the Duty of Candour applies when something goes wrong despite best efforts. Together, they ensure that care is both safe and transparent — one protects people through prevention, and the other restores trust through openness.
There are three recognised forms of the Duty of Candour: the professional duty, which applies to individual care workers and healthcare professionals; the organisational duty, which applies to care providers regulated by the Care Quality Commission under Regulation 20; and the statutory duty, which makes candour a legal requirement for all registered services. These levels work together to promote honesty across every part of care.
A care plan is a written agreement that details how an individual’s health and personal needs will be supported. It includes clear information about the person’s goals, preferences, and medical requirements, along with identified risks and ways to manage them. It also outlines staff responsibilities, includes consent from the individual, and sets review dates to ensure support remains appropriate.
“Understanding Your Role” is Standard 1 of the Care Certificate. It helps care workers recognise their duties, boundaries, and responsibilities within their role. It covers how to follow agreed ways of working, comply with organisational policies, and seek guidance when needed. This standard ensures care workers know where their accountability begins and ends.
If a care worker fails to meet the Duty of Candour, it can lead to disciplinary action or investigation by the Care Quality Commission. In serious cases, it may affect professional registration or employment. Breaches can also damage trust with service users and families. Organisations must report and learn from such incidents to prevent them in the future.
Yes. The Duty of Care is a legal and professional responsibility. It forms part of common law and applies to everyone working in health and social care. If harm occurs because a worker fails to act reasonably or safely, they can be held accountable. This duty ensures care is delivered with competence, caution, and respect.
The 2025 Care Certificate introduces clearer learning outcomes and updated expectations for all staff. For the first time, the Duty of Candour is included under Standard 3, alongside the Duty of Care. There is also greater emphasis on professional accountability, reflective learning, and communication, helping to create a stronger culture of openness in care services.
Yes. Managers play a key role in implementing the 2025 Care Certificate. They must ensure staff understand their responsibilities, receive proper training, and feel confident applying both duties in practice. Managers are also responsible for promoting a culture of openness, encouraging reporting, and supporting continuous improvement in care quality.
