Quick answer: The 6 Cs of care are care, compassion, competence, communication, courage and commitment — the six values introduced for nursing and care staff in NHS England's 2012 Compassion in Practice strategy, led by Chief Nursing Officer Jane Cummings. They now underpin recruitment, induction and appraisal across the NHS and social care, and you'll be asked about them in almost every care interview.
If you're applying for a care role, starting the Care Certificate, or studying a care qualification, the 6 Cs are the vocabulary the whole sector uses to describe good practice. Here's what each one actually means on a shift, where they came from, and how to talk about them convincingly in an interview.
What are the 6 Cs of care?
| The C | What it means | On-shift example |
|---|---|---|
| Care | Delivering consistent support that improves someone's life, tailored to them | Checking a resident's care plan before helping them, not applying one routine to everyone |
| Compassion | Care delivered through kindness, empathy, respect and dignity — how care feels to the person | Sitting at eye level and giving someone time to answer, rather than rushing a task |
| Competence | Having the knowledge and clinical/technical skill to do the job safely, and knowing your limits | Completing moving-and-handling training before using a hoist; escalating what you're not trained for |
| Communication | Listening as much as telling — with the person, their family and the team | Accurate handover notes; explaining what you're doing before you do it |
| Courage | Doing the right thing when it's uncomfortable — speaking up and embracing change | Raising a safeguarding concern about a colleague's practice |
| Commitment | Sticking with the person and the profession — reliability and improving your own practice | Turning up for the shift no one wants; pursuing your Level 3 while working |
A useful way to see the set: the first two describe the relationship, the middle two describe the craft, and the last two describe the character that holds both together on a hard day.
Two of these do the heaviest lifting in practice. Courage is the one inspectors and safeguarding reviews return to, because most serious care failures were seen by someone who didn't feel able to speak up — the same principle that drives the duty of candour. And communication is the most commonly cited root cause when things go wrong between shifts and services.
Where did the 6 Cs come from?
The 6 Cs were launched in December 2012 in Compassion in Practice, NHS England's three-year vision for nursing, midwifery and care staff, led by England's then Chief Nursing Officer Jane Cummings. The context mattered: the strategy landed alongside the inquiry into failures at Mid Staffordshire, when the system was asking how organisations full of trained professionals could deliver poor care. The answer the 6 Cs embody is that values and behaviours need naming and measuring, not just assuming.
Although written for nursing, the 6 Cs were adopted across adult social care almost immediately — they align with the Care Quality Commission's focus on caring, safe and responsive services, and with the Skills for Care frameworks that shape induction. They're not law, and they're not a qualification — they're a shared professional language.
How are the 6 Cs used in real care settings?
Concretely, you'll meet them in four places:
- Recruitment — values-based interviewing asks you to evidence each C with a real example ("tell me about a time you showed courage at work").
- Induction and the Care Certificate — the 15 Care Certificate standards operationalise the 6 Cs for new care workers; standard 1 (your role) and standard 6 (communication) map onto them directly.
- Supervision and appraisal — many providers structure reflective supervision around the Cs.
- Qualifications — the Level 3 Diploma in Adult Care assesses the values in practice, and the Level 5 in Leadership for Adult Care expects you to build a culture around them as a manager.
The 6 Cs also sit naturally alongside person-centred care: person-centred care is what good support looks like; the 6 Cs describe who you need to be to deliver it.
How do you answer 6 Cs interview questions?
The reliable structure is one real story per C, told as situation → action → outcome, kept to 60–90 seconds. What interviewers are listening for:
- Specifics over definitions. "Compassion means empathy" scores nothing; "I noticed Mrs H stopped eating when her daughter's visits ended, so I flagged it and we moved her mealtimes to the quiet lounge" scores highly.
- Courage answers involving escalation. The strongest courage examples are about raising concerns through the right channel, not heroics.
- Limits as competence. Saying "I asked for training before doing it alone" demonstrates competence better than claiming you can do everything.
- No experience yet? Use examples from any job or caring responsibility — reliability at a supermarket is commitment; calming an angry customer is communication and compassion.
Do the 6 Cs still apply in 2026?
Yes — they've outlived the original 2012–2015 strategy. NHS England's current nursing frameworks still reference the 6 Cs, care providers still recruit against them, and the values are embedded in the professional standards care workers sign up to. What has changed is the expectation around courage: with statutory duty of candour, Freedom to Speak Up guardians in the NHS and strengthened whistleblowing expectations in social care, speaking up has moved from an aspiration to a documented obligation.
For anyone building a care career, the practical takeaway: learn the 6 Cs properly once, with an example of your own for each, and you'll reuse them at every interview, induction and appraisal for the rest of your career. If you're formalising that career, Lift College's adult care qualifications from Level 3 to Level 5 are studied fully online on one monthly subscription, starting with a 7-day free trial — and the values you'll evidence in the diploma are exactly these six.
Author: Lift College Editorial Team