When I attended the Chief Nursing Officer Summit recently, I was struck by how many people whom I had never met before said ‘hello’ and introduced themselves, causing me to tweet about how #HelloMyNameIs has become ingrained in the DNA of the nursing profession. Excellent news.
This welcoming experience began with meeting fellow attendees at breakfast, sharing experiences and making connections. Next was meeting Professor Ian Peate (although he didn't tell me he was a prof, I learnt that when he gave me his card!). Once I'd shared my name with Ian and told him that I'm the CEO of Skills for Care, he wanted to know more about who we are and what we do. Better still, once I'd told him, he asked me to write about what we do.
Skills for Care is the Department of Health and Social Care's (DHSC) delivery partner for workforce development and leadership in adult social care in England, for whom we deliver a comprehensive work programme. We work closely with our sister organisations in the nations through our partnership Skills for Care and Development, because social care delivery is the responsibility of local government, and in the nations through the devolved administrations.
We support social care organisations, of which England has 21 200—mainly small organisations employing fewer than 50 people—to recruit, retain and develop their workforce. We do this because we know that investing in the development of colleagues in the best way to support them to provide the high-quality, person-centred, relationship-based care and support that is the DNA of adult social care.
One of our functions is to provide workforce intelligence, which we do through managing the National Minimum Data Set for Social Care (NMDS-SC), collecting and analysing workforce data from employers. Through this, we know that there are 1.47 million people working in adult social care in England, doing 1.6 million jobs. Like the NHS, adult social care is female dominated and has much to do to ensure that black and minority ethnic and disabled colleagues progress to leadership positions.
Adult social care contributes around £38 billion to the English economy and employs more people than the health service. Yet adult social care has a lower and less positive profile than the NHS, something we are working hard to address. We welcome support from our NHS colleagues to tackle this and we were particularly pleased to see the launch of the #HealthforCare initiative recently.
Without the skills, knowledge and value base of the social care workforce, including social workers, occupational therapists and nurses, the NHS Long Term Plan (NHS England, NHS Improvement, 2019) will not be delivered. Adult social care colleagues support people with a huge range of care and support needs in a range of settings—their homes, residential and nursing care homes, day provision, and through Shared Lives Plus and Homeshare—to live their lives.
All the feedback from workers shows they think what they do in our communities is fulfilling, rewarding, demanding, complex and requires high levels of skill and emotional intelligence. If there is one thing guaranteed to get me on my soapbox, it's that lazy conflation that low pay equals low skilled. Sadly, it is the case that job in the adult social care are often low paid, which is a source of national shame. Social care workers provide intimate and often life-changing support, so how can this role be worth minimum wage or just above? These are certainly not a low-skill roles and, if you don't believe me, do contact us to arrange to spend a day with a social care worker. I guarantee you will believe me then.
One of the biggest challenges employers consistently raise with us is on the issue of recruitment and retention. We have over 110 000 vacancies on any single day across England and the NMDS-SC projects that by 2035 we will need another 650 000 roles. Turnover, or more accurately churn, in the sector is at an average 30%; this rises significantly when we disaggregate to look at domiciliary care or nursing roles in social care. We have a lot to do to raise the profile, status and value of our social care workforce.
You can help us. Whenever you hear someone talk about social care as low skilled, challenge them. Social care workers often know the people they engage with better than anyone—they are intimately involved in their lives. Listen to their knowledge and expertise.
This is just a snapshot of what Skills for Care is and what we do. If you'd like to know more, visit our website (www.skillsforcare.org.uk) or follow us on Twitter @skillsforcare. Thank you for engaging.