Social care is delivered by around 150 local authorities in England and some 25,000 independent organisations, including private for-profit, private not-for-profit and voluntary. Although the social care sector has a number of big players, it is dominated by small and medium sized employers. This has implications for the workforce in terms of training, career development and job security in parts of the social care sector. The private sector provides the vast majority of publicly funded care service and accounts for more than 60% of the overall workforce. Yet despite the growing importance of the private sector, government policies remain a key driver of the sector.

At the heart of the government’s agenda is the modernisation of social services that includes:

• the provision of user-centred services, often in co-operation with other agencies
• a better trained workforce to improve the quality of services
• regulations aimed to drive up standards, such as the new national minimum standards or performance indicators
• the so-called Best Value policy, aimed to improve the efficiency of public services provision

As a result of the latter, local authorities have been under increased pressure to outsource services to the private sector.

After a rapid increase in employment during the early 1980s and early 1990s, growth rates in the health and social care sector have slowed down. However, continued job increases are forecast to 2012 at a rate of 1% per annum. This is the fourth highest growth rate among 25 sectors. These projections do not take into account policy driven changes within the sector, and may therefore be an underestimate, given the targeted workforce expansion.

But labour supply has not kept up with demand, partly because other sectors of the economy seem to offer more attractive jobs and career opportunities. The vacancy rate in the health and social work sector is only slightly higher than across all industry sectors (3.9% compared to 3.1%), but it is the third highest vacancy rate overall, with nearly one in two vacancies (compared to 40% overall) being classified by employers as hard-to-fill vacancies.

Staff shortages and recruitment problems in social care are widespread with low pay, lack of career progression opportunities and image problems playing a key role. There is even talk of social care reaching near crisis point. In 2002, about one in ten posts in social services departments were vacant, compared to a vacancy rate for the overall economy of 3.1%.

The highest vacancy rates in social service departments were recorded for occupational therapists (20%) and field social workers working with children (12.6%). Progress on reducing staff shortages in social services departments was variable. Vacancy rates appear to have dropped in some occupational groups, such as care staff in residential homes for the elderly, stagnated or risen in others, such as in the case of occupational therapists where the vacancy rates seemed to have doubled within five years. Surveys suggest that the independent sector has lower vacancy rates compared to social services departments, but higher turnover rates. In both parts of the sector, recruitment is a bigger issue than retention (Eborall 2003a, drawing on various surveys).

Like in health care, staff shortages have prompted a number of measures. At national level they include a recruitment campaign and a revised social care workforce strategy to be published in due course, and at a more local level measures such as skill mix changes (i.e. increased employment of social work assistants), financial incentives, development of a general human resources strategy, and international recruitment.

The national social care recruitment campaign by the Department of Health, first launched in 2001, was thought to have played a role in the rise of applicants to social work courses in 2003/04. Yet it is too early to assess the impact of the new £4 million recruitment campaign for social care aiming to attract more people into the majority of care jobs requiring low or intermediate level skills. It is argued that more efforts could go into recruiting staff from a more diverse workforce, including men, older workers, ethnic minority groups or refugees by overcoming existing barriers.

Source: IER/IFF Research Ltd. 2003 and Eborall 2003a

Source: Skills for Health 2003, page 13

Although there are no precise targets for the workforce expansion like in health care, expansion will undoubtedly take place, partly in response to demographic changes.

The short and medium–term demand for intermediate and higher level qualifications will increase as a direct result of the national minimum standards. The new qualification requirements may lay the foundations for better career progression opportunities in the social care sector, but there are also concerns that the qualifications do not or not sufficiently translate into pay increases. Plans are also underway for more employment based routes into social care, such as the trainee social worker programmes to enhance labour supply.

Changes in service delivery aiming to provide more user-centred services entail the development of new job roles which needs to be supported by adequate training and the development of suitable qualifications. To facilitate this process, TOPSS has received £6 million to fund employer-led pilots developing new ways of working. Examples of such pilots include person-centred workers in response to the green paper ‘Every Child Matters’, scoping enhanced roles for the personal assistant function in connection with the direct payment system (HPA Ltd.) and a community support assistance role, combining elements of home care, auxiliary nursing and clinical support worker functions (Leeds), with new roles combining elements of medical and social care also evolving elsewhere. Staff shortages also drive the review of the current skill mix.

The Institute for Public Policy Research argued in their vision for 2020 the case for emerging new user-focused occupations, drawing on elements from various occupations, while social work as an occupation would no longer exist. Instead social care administrators could emerge together will a small number of specialists focusing on more complex care needs. In contrast, the Green Paper, ‘Every Child Matters’ plans better career opportunities for social workers by recognising advanced skills in the form of senior practitioner posts and consultant social worker posts.

The first national training strategy for social care published in 2000 identified the following skills gaps, which might not have lost much of its relevance:

• management at all levels
• leadership
• information management
• IT
• managing violent and challenging behaviour
• partnership working
• handling increasing dependency levels within a ‘promoting independence culture’

Source: TOPSS 2004, Department of Health 2004, DfES 2004, Eborall 2003a, Hughes 2002 and TOPSS 2000

The development of new user-centred services, often involving inter-agency work, has only just begun, and will continue to evolve. Examples from the TOPSS pilots 2003-2006 include services that involve service-users in the service design, workforce issues and provision of services or projects providing a single assess point for services.

The recent Green Paper ‘Every Child Matters’ has called for more user-centred services for children, young people and families and the government is currently consulting on a new vision for adult social services, emphasising the need for ‘person-centred’, ‘proactive’ and ’seemless’ services.

The Institute for Public Policy Research’s vision for 2020 identified three key drivers of change: social, political and demographic change. It is, for example, argued that clients, in particularly the growing number of elderly people, will demand more personalised services. Equally, social changes call for adequate care services for elderly people from ethnic minorities who may no longer be able to rely on traditional family support structures.

Source: TOPSS 2004, DfES 2004 and McTeran 2002