Recommendation 26

HM Government · verbatim extract Accepted

Our ambition for the social care workforce remains as set out in People at the Heart of Care. We have outlined our plan for delivering the workforce policies set out there in Next Steps to Put People at the Heart of Care. Alongside the plan set out at a national level, it is local authorities who are ultimately responsible for ensuring there is sufficient capacity to meet care needs in their area. Councils have a key role to play in utilising their oversight of local systems to identify workforce shortages. They can develop local workforce plans that recognise and respond to local challenges, based on their knowledge. Local authorities should work closely with care providers to ensure joined-up workforce planning, including effective system-wide coordination of recruitment and development. Nationally and in local areas, the adult social care workforce is one of our greatest assets. Yet there are long-standing challenges in recruiting and retaining a workforce of the right size with the right skills. As set out in People at the Heart of Care, our focus is to transform what it is like to have a career in social care, including supporting the workforce to develop the knowledge and skills required to develop and progress, as well as enabling social care employers to recruit and retain staff with the right skills and values. Currently, a significant proportion of the adult social care workforce do not hold a relevant qualification or have access to good quality learning and development opportunities, which contributes to high turnover of staff. Tackling these challenges and improving the perception of social care as a career is our priority. We work in close partnership with adult social care representative bodies and local areas to tackle these challenges together including delivery of the reforms we have set out. Our workforce reforms, which sum to £250 million over the next two years, will provide the workforce with more support to develop and progress within their careers and will improve the quality, safety and personalisation of care. 28 Government response New national ASC Workforce Competency Framework and additional funding for training We recently published a call for evidence on the development of a new, national competency framework for the adult social care workforce. This sets out our proposals for how the workforce could be structured. The framework will define and differentiate between roles and the behaviours, knowledge and skills required to undertake them, including recognising specialist skills, and will increase opportunities for progression as people develop expertise. The framework will also articulate the values needed to be part of the adult social care workforce. Once embedded the framework will improve employers’ ability to recruit and retain individuals who are best suited and committed to a career in adult social care; and enable employers to support their employees’ career progression in their chosen area. We are committed to co-designing the framework and are working in partnership with Skills for Care who have expertise in skills and development within the adult social care sector. We intend to publish a first version of the framework, focusing on the care worker role, in the autumn. Alongside the development of the framework, we are providing funding for hundreds of thousands of training places to support development and progression. This funding will give members of the adult social care workforce the opportunity to develop and improve skills to support them to deliver high-quality, personalised care. This training offer will include: • investment in leadership, dementia, digital and learning disability and autism training • funding for Continuous Professional Development (CPD) for regulated professionals • funding for digital skills • a new Care Certificate Level 2 qualification, which will launch next year. Over time we want this new qualification to become the baseline standard for all new care workers to work towards when they join the profession. The qualification will also address challenges with portability and repeat training in the sector. Our measures will be subject to robust monitoring and evaluation to ensure the impacts of reform can be measured and understood, and to inform subsequent phases of our long- term workforce strategy. Government response 29 Conclusion 27 – parity of pay with the NHS Conclusion 27 - We heard repeatedly that an absolutely critical lever for stabilising the adult social care market was tackling staff shortages and low retention. This would widen access to care and help to give unpaid carers a much-needed break. There is also the very real risk that the Government’s charging reforms do not immediately improve matters, for instance by drawing more people into the care system without having enough workers to deliver the care for which these people will now be eligible. We were repeatedly told that the solution is to increase wages. It is litt