There are several ways of thinking about the adult social care workforce. The first is to get an impression of it when compared to the NHS. It is larger in numbers (having 1.65 million jobs) than the NHS workforce, but very different in pay, terms and conditions. Many more people work part-time and most are women. In contrast to the NHS most people employed in adult social care work in quite small organisations, the average care home employs about 35 people and the average home care agency about 40 per location. And the smaller numbers of people working in adult social care – such as directly employed care workers (Personal Assistants) are largely on their own.
The staffing crisis in social care is a matter of high levels of vacancies, and high turnover. This is evident in the number of adverts seeking employees and in some wage increases to retain the existing workforce as much as to attract new applicants. Covid-19 has exacerbated these problems since the stresses of working in this sector have been amplified – stresses such as worries about outbreaks of the virus on service users and lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) are being replaced by tiredness, depression and anxiety, and fewer positive feelings about their jobs.
Amid this gloom what is being done? First, government is running recruitment campaigns in the form of advertising the inherent human rewards of social care work – that people can make a difference, and funding some extra Covid-related costs; second, many councils are supporting more local initiatives such as Proud to Care; and lastly employers are using every form of social media to advertise, with incentives such as rewards for recruiting a friend. Beyond these immediate responses, the White Paper ‘People at the Heart of Care’ proposed a new universal career structure, a skills passport, and a Knowledge and Skills Framework and more training opportunities, and promised at least £500 million over the coming three years to start to transform support for the care workforce.
Other developments are role specific, such as recruiting more nurses to work in adult social care by highlighting the opportunities for professional development in this sector and not just the NHS. And making use of wider skills investments such as apprenticeships to become a Nursing Assistant in social care are underway, if developing slowly. All these initiatives reveal no shortage of ideas of what can be done and needs to be done to support this workforce who were and are on the ‘frontline’ of care during these testing times.