fbpx

The Care Suite Experience in Reading

State-of-the-art care facilities for hire for all your training needs!

Care Skills Training Centre

The Care Skills Training Centre at Reading College gives students a unique insight into careers in clinical health and social care.

We offer a range of activities tailored to your educational and training needs. With a six-bed simulated hospital ward, fully equipped home care room and a fully immersive learning space, we provide the hands-on, practical, learning experiences that students need.

Our Care Skills Training Centre at Reading College provides acute clinical and residential care facilities for simulated teaching and learning. Learners will have the opportunity to practice and refine the skills they need to make them ready for life in the workplace.

As well as using the facilities for our own learning programmes, we are keen to help meet the training and development needs of local health care organisations, schools and colleges.

Rooms are available to hire and we offer full and half days to support all your training needs. They will be fully supported by qualified teaching staff.

Who we are

We empower people to go further in learning and in life, by recognising their uniqueness and by providing an environment which builds confidence and raises aspirations.

We work with students, experts in learning, and business leaders to co-create curricula and build industry-relevant career pathways. Our focus on enterprise and entrepreneurship means that our students develop real-life business skills that give them the edge in a competitive jobs market.

The facilities are used by a range of different students. Our full-time, 16–18-years-old students use the facility to help prepare them for careers in health and social care. Whereas our foundation degree students are already employed by the NHS and use the facility to learn new skills. The facilities are available to meet the staff training needs of local healthcare organisations as well as being open to local schools.

There is rising demand for care services as a result of an ageing population and local authorities’ focussed on supporting people to live independently within their own homes.
It is estimated that the social care workforce alone needs to grow by 750 new jobs every year to 2025 to keep pace with demand.

Our care suite will help to attract more people to consider working in the sector, giving them an excellent preparation for their career, as well as developing the skills and expertise of those already employed by the NHS. The Care Suite is an incredibly important facility. Equipping our health and social care teams with the essential skills and hands-on training they need is crucial to ensuring a positive future for care services throughout the county.

The facilities support training in areas of health and social care including dementia and end of life care, infection control, medication administration and wound care.

Our offers

Through a range of hands-on, practical experiences based in our four-bed hospital ward, fully-equipped home care room, emergency care centre or 3D VR Immersive Space, we can offer a range of activities tailored to your educational and training needs.

Age group: Year 7–13, tailored to meet your curriculum needs 
Duration: 3 hours (1/2 day) or 6 hours ( full day) 
Good for: STEM, Maths, experience of work, Technology, PSE 
Price: Three hours is £175 per session. Six hours is £300 per session. There's a maximum of 16 students per session. 

 

Emergency! Emergency! Are you ready? 

3 hours 

Are you ready to save a life? Our 3D VR Immersive Space will allow students to fully experience an emergency situation. This short session will deliver basic first aid skills and wound dressings within a hospital A&E setting. Throughout the session, the discussion of treatment and care of injuries will be related to professions in health care. 

6 hours 

This isn’t for the faint hearted, as students will be fully immersed in a simulated accident with multiple casualties. They will take on the role and responsibility for attending to basic first aid needs, wound dressing and completing emergency assessments. Students will follow casualties from incident to A&E and home. Our unique facilities allow students to gain insight into a range of career opportunities available within the emergency services, including Police, Ambulance and accident and emergency care. 

 

Stretch, Challenge and Differentiation 

For older students, we can address how to care for the dead and dying and more advanced conditions such as amputations and severe burns. 

With advanced notice, we are also able to involve wound simulation and realistic incidences, which will add realism to first aid and major incidences making this a truly ‘truly life experience’. 

Please do not hesitate to discuss specific needs of your curriculum, as our fully-equipped hospital environment can be tailored to add real-life experiences to enhance the student experience. 

Download information about our A Day in Casualty  

Age group: Year 7-13, tailored to meet your curriculum needs 
Duration: 3 hours (1/2 day) or 6 hours ( full day) 
Good for: Experience of work, English, Technology, PSE 
Price: Three hours is £175 per session. Six hours is £300 per session. There's a maximum of 12 students per session. 

 

Are you feeling old? 

3 hours 

This intense session explores what it’s like to be old. Students start by looking at media stereotypes of ageing and discussing what it might feel like to be old. By wearing special ageing or dementia simulation equipment, learners can then really experience what it feels like to have restricted movement that simulates arthritis and dementia. By wearing simulation glasses that impair vision, learners will attempt every day activities, such as dressing, getting ready for bed, eating, washing and getting out of the bath. Learners will then re-examine their initial thoughts if they have altered. 

6 hours 

To extend this activity, students will explore the roles of health and social care professionals and the skills and attributes needed to care for elderly people. Through the use of daily living aids, students will personally experience how to help someone feed themselves, brush their teeth, wash, dress and move around their own home. Students will also explore equipment that help people to become more mobile and maintain their independence. 

 

Stretch, Challenge and Differentiation 

To help develop English skills further, students can take part in the making of memory boxes and documenting personal life stories. In addition, students can complete real-life admission document that record an individual’s health history. 

For higher level students and those interested in caring for elderly people we can introduce care professionals to deliver sessions on working in care. 

Please do not hesitate to discuss specific needs of your curriculum, as our fully equipped hospital environment can be tailored to add real-life experiences to enhance the student experience. 

Download information about Caring for an Elderly Person at Home

Age group: Tailored to meet your curriculum needs 
Duration: 3 hours (1/2 day) 
Good for: English, Maths, Science 
Price: Three hours is £175 per session. There's a maximum of 16 students per session. 

Three hours 

Why not use our wonderful facilities to help students enhance their GCSEs. With a little imagination we can help you to enrich your teaching, for example 

 

English 

  • Feel fear by attending a major incident 
  • Write up an elderly person’s life story 
  • Admit someone to hospital 
  • Discuss death and dying with health professionals 

Maths 

  • Make up prescriptions and administering drugs 
  • Calculate burn ratios 
  • Take and record vital observations 
  • Stretch, Challenge and Differentiation 

 

Science 

  • Crime scenes and major incidences 
  • Human Biology, have a look inside yourself 
  • Bacteria and epidemiology 

 

History 

  • Experience the Blitz and wartime bombing 
  • How did a wartime diet affect health and teeth 
  • History of the NHS 

 

Stretch, Challenge and Differentiation 

All sessions can be extended to a full six hours and tailored to meet the needs of different levels of students. 
Please do not hesitate to discuss specific needs of your curriculum as our fully equipped hospital environment can be tailored to add real-life experiences to enhance the student experience. 

Download information about our GCSE courses 

Age group: Year 3–9, tailored to meet your curriculum needs 
Duration: Three hours (1/2 day) 
Good for: STEM, Maths, PSE 
Price: Three hours is £175 per session. There's a maximum of 16 students per session. 

 

A tissue! A tissue! We all fall down 

Three hours 

This session is split into two halves and will address hand and teeth hygiene. 

 

Hands 

This is full of gruesome, practical information regarding hand hygiene and the spread of disease. To emphasize the points made and stress the importance of effective hand washing, everyone is given the opportunity to see how well they wash fake hand germs off their own hands by using our ultraviolet hand hygiene machines. Then, using our clinical elbow operated sinks, students will be able to practice the high standards of handwashing needed in the care environment. 

 

Teeth 

Our dental nurse will be able to demonstrate good dental hygiene and ‘how to look after your teeth’. With the use of health promotion resources, they will explore with students how food interacts with dental health. 

 

Stretch, Challenge and Differentiation 

To embed Maths into this session students will address the multiplication of bacteria and their possible effect on the health of populations. 

Please do not hesitate to discuss specific needs of your curriculum as our fully equipped hospital environment can be tailored to add real-life experiences to enhance the student experience. 

Download information about Horrid Hands and Rotten Teeth 

Age group: Year 7–13, tailored to meet your curriculum needs 
Duration: Three hours (1/2 day) or 6 hours (full day) 
Good for: STEM, maths, experience of work, technology, PSE 
Price: Three hours is £175 per session. Six hours is £300 per session. There's a maximum of 16 students per session. 

 

What are you made of? 

Three hours 

Explore your insides using our state-of-the-art equipment. Using interactive clothing students can see their own heart beating and lungs breathing. Students will have the opportunity to measure their own vital observations and record their findings on observation charts. 

Six hours 

In the second interactive session, students will be able to develop their clinical skills further by exploring what happens when the circulatory, respiratory and digestive systems stop working properly. Students will become familiar with X-rays, ECG readings, urine and blood analysis, nebulisers, fluid balance and the use of swabs to detect infection. 

In addition, students will also be shown basic first aid techniques related to each physiological system studied. 

 

Stretch, challenge and differentiation 

With advanced notice, we are also able to involve wound simulation and realistic incidences, which will add realism to first aid and major incidences making this a real ‘true life experience’ where students can explore what happens to a body in an accident or when ill. 

For higher-level students we are able to introduce the use of medication to address problems within the human body. 

Please do not hesitate to discuss specific needs of your curriculum, as our fully equipped hospital environment can be tailored to add real-life experiences to enhance the student experience. 

Download information about Human Biology 

Age group: Year 7–13, tailored to meet your curriculum needs 
Duration: One day 
Good for: Work experience, Careers 
Price: £300 per day with a maximum of 12 students 

 

Introduction to a patient journey 

  • Discussion about careers in the NHS 
  • Scenario start: accidents in the home 
  • Emergency first aid 
  • Transfer to hospital 
  • Accident and Emergency treatment. 
  • Have a go at basic monitoring tests, such as measuring blood pressure, measuring blood O2 saturation. 
  • Long term hospital care: find out how a hospital ward works and how patients' basic needs are met. 
  • Care in the home; how we care for someone at home in the NHS. 
  • Home assessment; how to prepare someone's home for their return after long-term hospital admission. 
  • Evaluation in the NHS 

Download information about Patient Journey 

Age group: Year 12 13, tailored to meet your curriculum needs 
Duration: One day 
Good for: Work experience, Careers 
Price: Maximum 15 students, at £20 per student. 

 

Preparation for nursing interviews 

Activate Learning has very close partnerships with local NHS providers and as such is able to offer students specific training to prepare them for entry to degrees in Nursing. 

 

Morning session 

Students will spend the first part of the day practising basic nursing skills in our six bedded hospital ward. This unique experience will give students a flavour of the skills needed to be a nurse. 

 

Afternoon session 

Students will meet nurse recruitment staff from Oxford Brookes University, Oxford Hospital Trust, and The Royal Berkshire Hospital, who will help students gain an insight into ‘what they are looking for’ when selecting students to start their nurse training. Students will also have the opportunity to prepare their UCAS personal statement with advice from nurse recruiting staff. 

Please do not hesitate to discuss specific needs of your curriculum as our fully equipped hospital environment can be tailored to add real-life experiences to enhance the student experience. 

Download information about UCAS Degree in Nursing 

Age group: 14+ tailored to meet your curriculum needs 
Duration: 3 hours (1/2 day) or 6 hours (full day) 
Good for: Health Awareness, English, Technology, PSEE 
Price: Maximum 12 students per session, 3 hours £175 per session, 6 hours £300 per session. 

 

Teenagers and smoking cessation 

Three hours 

This session explores this history of smoking. Students start by looking at media stereotypes of smoking and discussing why and how it became popular through the centuries, discussing the chemicals in cigarettes and how they age your skin. Attendees will use stop smoking resources such as tar and black lung equipment in group activities. 

 

Teenagers and alcohol abuse 

Three hours 

This session explores more about the risks of drinking and discusses the long-term effects of alcohol abuse, including how it can make young people more vulnerable and the dangers they could face. We also offer tools and videos on underage drinking from Family Lives. 

 

Smoking, Drinking and Balanced diet 

Six hours 

Students will explore when alcohol is used heavily on a regular basis it is a factor many different diseases some of which can be fatal. 

Students will explore the long-term effects of smoking, caused by the tar and other poisons and how they are dangerous for your health. 

Students will explore as a teenager how their bodies are going through many physical changes. Changes that need to be supported by a healthy, balanced diet. By learning about eating a varied and balanced diet and how, they will be able to get all the energy and nutrients they need from the food and drink consumed, allowing their body to grow and develop properly. 

 

Stretch, Challenge and Differentiation 

To help develop English skills further, students can take part in the making of memory boxes and documenting personal life stories. In addition, students can complete real-life admission document that record an individual’s health history. 
Please do not hesitate to discuss specific needs of your curriculum as our fully equipped hospital environment can be tailored to add real-life experiences to enhance the student experience. 

Download information about Teen Stop Smoking and Drinking 

Age group: Year 10–13, tailored to meet your curriculum needs 
Duration: 1–10 days 
Good for: Work experience, Careers, STEM, Maths, English, Technology, PSE 
Price: 8–12 students, at £20 per student per day. 

 

Working in Health and Social Care professions 

This is experience can be tailored from one day to a full week. Using our fantastic experience students will follow the journey of a patient from home, to the hospital and back again and the roles and responsibilities of all the health and care professionals that they will meet in between. Each day will be pack with practical hands-on experiences. 

The experience can be designed to meet the specific needs of a school or college, through selection of learning opportunities from the list below. 

  • Emergency first aid and major incidences 
  • Day in A&E 
  • Exploration of over 20 different jobs in health and care 
  • Infection control prevention of the spread of disease 
  • Nursing skills and person-centred care in hospital 
  • Delivering person-centred care in the home 
  • Caring for the elderly 
  • Caring for people with Dementia 
  • Promoting children’s health 
  • Health promotion 
  • Preparation for UCAS applications to apply for degrees in Nursing 
  • Meet the professionals 

Stretch, Challenge and Differentiation 

For higher level students we can offer bespoke sessions that look at medical careers and health sciences in more detail. This will include x-rays and bone structure, glucose monitoring and the treatment of diabetes and the treatment of acute Asthma. 

We are also able to offer sessions on death and dying. 

Please do not hesitate to discuss specific needs of your curriculum as our fully equipped hospital environment can be tailored to add real-life experiences to enhance the student experience. 

Download information about Work Experience 

Located in the heart of Reading

  • Address
    Reading College, Kings Road, Reading, Berkshire, RG1 4HJ

Opening Times

Term Time 
Monday and Wednesday: 8:00am–⁠6:00pm 
Tuesday and Thursday: 8:00am–⁠⁠8:00pm 
Friday: 8:00am–⁠7:00pm 
Saturday: 9:00–⁠1:00pm 

Out of Term 
Monday–⁠Thursday: 8:30am–⁠5:00pm 
Friday: 8:30am–⁠4:00pm 

Term Time 
Monday and Wednesday: 8:30am–⁠5:00pm
Tuesday and Thursday: 8:30am–⁠7:00pm 
Friday: 8:30am–⁠4:00pm 

Out of Term 
Monday–⁠Thursday: 8:30am–⁠5:00pm 
Friday: 8:30am–⁠4:00pm 

Open to the public

View more details on our excellent facilities below!