The social care workforce has a high percentage of low skilled staff and a low percentage of highly skilled staff, such as social workers (now required to take a 3 year degree), occupational therapists and nurses. Care workers and care assistants are the single biggest occupational group. Data on the occupational composition of 170 independent and voluntary sector organisations providing day care, residential care and domiciliary care in one sub-region may serve as an illustration: 68% of staff were carers, 6% nurses, 8% supervisors, 4% mangers and 14% others.

Occupations providing and managing care services or assessing care needs include:

• social workers
• care home workers
• home carers
• care assistants
• managers (care home managers, domiciliary care managers)
• supervisors
• residential wardens
• others support workers
• occupational therapists
• nurses (residential homes)
• nursing auxiliaries and assistants (residential homes)

Caring personal services occupations are among the fastest growing occupations at a rate of 3% per year between 1999 and 2010. This also applies to its sub-group, the healthcare and related personal services comprising the biggest occupational group within social care. Taking into account expansion and replacement demand resulting from retirements and mortality, some 1.4 million people in caring personal services occupations will be needed between 2002 to 2012 (Wilson et al. 2003), equating to about 10% of the replacement demand of the whole economy.

Job growth with also be experienced by health and social services managers (2.0-2.9%) and therapists (1.0-1.9%).

Source: Skills in England 2003 and Gordon, et al. 2003

For information on occupations in the social care sector go to the Prospects wesbite.

The ACareerChange website aims to help those who feel stuck in a career or have an ambition to work in an alternative field.  The website includes a section on the Caring and Education sector which has a profile on becoming a social worker that provides information on what the job entails, help in deciding whether you are right for the job, and details of the training required.