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