The author of this paper conducted semi-structured interviews from December 2011 to July 2013 with a range of private sector care home staff (n ¼ ۳۶) as part of a PhD research project supervised by the University of Birmingham. A recurring perception among respondents, comprising care home proprietors, care managers and care staff, was that qualifications and training alone do not produce caring staff or caring behaviour. Rather, respondents identified that it was often the inherent, personal value frameworks held by these staff, and their subsequent attitudes and behaviours, that tended to influence how they acted towards those in their care, irrespective of any training they received (Moore, 2017). Prompted by these assertions from members of all groups of respondents during the research project, the author subsequently decided to explore if there was any discernible relationship between staff proven to have perpetrated abuse in private sector care and nursing homes, and the absence or presence of recognised qualifications among them. Any relationship that might be determined was perceived to have utility both in terms of supporting or refuting the claims of interview respondents during the preceding research project and, perhaps more importantly, by informing future preventative strategies to protect adults at risk. The research was inductive in nature in that it did not seek to test any particular hypothesis, but might contribute to building new theory concerning the fundamental reasons why staff in care homes sometimes abuse the people in their care. Care homes are those registered with the statutory regulator, the Care Quality Commission to provide exclusively personal care, nursing homes are those registered to provide nursing and personal care.

Reviewing the literature Training for staff who provide care in care and nursing homes and many other settings, which may or may not be in the form of nationally recognised qualifications, has been frequently offered as a solution to the occurrence of poor quality care and abuse (Tadd, Woods, O’Neill, Windle, Read, Sedden, Hall and Bayer, 2011; Faulkner, 2012; Cavendish, 2013; West Sussex Adult Safeguarding Board, 2014), including, amongst other subject areas, respecting and valuing those who require care, treating them with dignity, maintaining self-awareness as a care giver and managing personal stress (Skills for Care, 2014).