We have posted our interactions with Skills for Care before, and we are always keen to promote the work that they do for the care sector in the UK.
Skills for Care has recently published its annual State of the Adult Social Care Sector and Workforce in England report - and announced plans to develop a new and comprehensive workforce strategy for adult social care.
Jacqueline Payne, Registered Manager explained further “this report and the important work that Skills for Care is doing in working with UK Government is really helping to standardise training in our industry, and as a result ultimately our clients will derive the benefit from this initiative.
The report covers the year from April 2022 to March 2023, which saw some improvements in workforce capacity - largely driven by an increase in international recruitment - including more posts being filled, fewer vacancies and less turnover.
The report also highlights ongoing trends for the sector, including 390,000 people leaving their jobs - with around a third of them leaving the sector altogether.
This year’s report gives brand new insight into what works when it comes to keeping people working in adult social care. It identifies five factors that are key to retaining staff. They are:
- being paid more than the minimum wage
- not being on a zero-hours contract
- being able to work full-time
- being able to access training
- having a relevant qualification.
Where none of these factors apply, care workers are more than twice as likely to leave their jobs than when all five factors apply – a 48.7% turnover rate compared with 20.6%.
The full report can be accessed here: https://www.skillsforcare.org.... added further: “the CQC and others have commented that there is a need to ensure that the care sector workforce is treated fairly, given scope for job development and compensated at a level which reflects the importance of high care standards otherwise there will continue to be a migration of workers away from our sector. At Gabriel’s Angels we have always recognised and met the need to retain our staff in our family company, and we fully endorse what the Skills for Care report highlights”.