Social care workforce crisis
25 July 2022
A new report outlines how the Government has failed to meet its own commitments to respond to the social care workforce crisis. The scale of the workforce crisis has never been greater, and yet the report illustrates how, time after time, the Government’s response has been inadequate
The Health and Social Care Committee’s Expert Panel Report lists an astonishing number of failures by the Government, and we were not surprised to see its overall progress rated as ‘inadequate’. The Government has consistently failed to meet its own commitments to plan for, build, and support the social care workforce.
There continues to be no coherent national strategy for recruiting more social care staff and driving down the vacancy rate – current estimates are that there are over 100,000 unfilled jobs in social care; the Government has still not begun spending £1 billion per year to support staff and improve facilities, infrastructure, and technology; and the Government continues to fail to listen to social care staff themselves, with no workforce surveys as are done in the NHS.
We agree with the report’s conclusions that these commitments are mostly inappropriate for addressing the actual issues, are under-funded and under-resourced, and have had little to no impact. The Government still has no real plans for dealing with the greatest workforce crisis we have ever faced.
Our input to the Report was informed by what we hear from our clients on the helpline, and it is positive to see that the report has highlighted many of our contributions. However, we remain concerned by the Report’s overall focus on the NHS, which reflects the Government’s continued treatment of social care as a poor relation of the NHS. The Government must urgently prioritise tackling the social care workforce crisis and ensure that social care staff are properly valued, supported, and paid.
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