Teresa Exelby comments on Skills For Care’s latest report

Skills for Care has published its annual State of the Adult Social Care Sector and Workforce in England report yesterday, Thursday 12th October, and has announced plans to develop a new, comprehensive workforce strategy for the sector.

Community Integrated Care’s Chief Corporate Services & People Officer, Teresa Exelby, has shared her comments:

“Skills For Care’s latest report demonstrates that recruitment remains an ongoing challenge for providers across our sector. Whilst a small improvement in vacancy rates has been achieved by attracting applicants internationally, social care continues to struggle to attract domestic talent in the absence of fair pay and investment in career pathways.

With the report stating that 390,000 people have also left their roles in social care – around a third of these leaving our sector all together – the challenge of retaining colleagues has also not gone away. The many highly skilled people working in care, who all have an incredible amount of passion for their role and the people they support, are having to face impossible circumstances, retaining a career that they love whilst also paying their bills. 

As Skills For Care’s CEO, Oonagh Smyth, has already stated, it is simply not possible to recruit ourselves out of these retention challenges. Significantly, the report identifies five key factors that improve retention across the sector – 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; and having a relevant qualification – many of which our charity long called for in our Unfair To Care research.

With this in mind, we welcome this announcement of a new, comprehensive workforce strategy, and look forward to working with Skills For Care and our partners across the sector to deliver a brighter future for social care.”