A Serious look at Social Care Workforce Issues from All Party Political Group: Time for hope?

The opening words of the APPG report induce a sense of hope in a beleaguered sector as it recognises the fundamental problems of an undervalued, undertrained and underpaid workforce:

“Few would argue that a major upheaval of the sector is required, as is a serious injection of funding. But there is another, far less discussed crisis within this sector; the workforce crisis, and comprehensive evidence presented to this All-Party Inquiry suggests that it is widespread, acute and urgent. High quality, sustainable social care is fundamental to a healthy and dignified society, yet care workers - the vital frontline foundation of the social care system - are too often overlooked in terms of investment, training, remuneration and value. This oversight is clearly impacting workers themselves and the vulnerable people who rely on their work. “ Louise Haigh MP and Gillian Keegan MP

This places the focus on the workforce issues in social care, calling for professionalisation of care workers. Professor Jill Manthorpe points to the title of the report: ‘Elevation, Registration & Standardisation: Professionalisation of Social Care Workers’. referring to these three pillars as underpinning of a process of professionalisation that “has already happened with good effect in social work and indeed in healthcare.”

Skills for Care CEO, Andy Tilden comments: “we welcome this initiative from an all-party group of parliamentarians that recognises there is an urgent need to value and reward the efforts of the social care workforce so that social care becomes a genuine career of choice.”

Cllr Ian Hudspeth, Chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, said: “Developing a fully-fledged professional social care workforce is something which councils encourage and this must be recognised as a major long-term project.” but introduces the seeds of caution with the observation that this needs appropriate funding

Kelly Andrews, GMB National Officer for Care, said: “Today’s groundbreaking cross-party report is very welcome ….. It’s encouraging to see politicians of all stripes putting forward a bold plan to fix a care sector that is crumbling around our ears.” The GMB, a large trade union included their own report recommending steps for professionalisation as a response

Is it a ray of hope? One hopes so given the Skills for Care report on the state of the market which makes for dire reading showing the following key findings:

The estimated turnover rate of directly employed staff working in the adult social care sector was 30.8%, equivalent to approximately 440,000 leavers over the year.

• It is estimated that 7.8% of the roles in adult social care are vacant, equal to approximately 122,000 vacancies at any time.

• Around a quarter of the workforce (24%) were on a zero-hours contract (370,000 jobs). Almost half (43%) of the domiciliary care workforce were on zero-hours contracts.

• The average number of sickness days was 4.8, this equates to approximately 6.94 million days lost to sickness in the past 12 months.