Valuing our social care workforce – on the brink of action?

Our President, Melanie Williams, shares her thoughts on the importance of the new adult social care workforce strategy and what it means for those working in and drawing on care and support. (ADASS was part of the steering group for the new strategy, led by Skills for Care.)

Social care is about social justice. Our social care workforce not only enables people to live a good life, it enables them to have a life, and feel well, safe and secure. We’re there for people constantly, in incredibly diverse ways, through thousands of relationships every day.

This involves working in settings where people live together, alone, in institutions where they’re detained against their will or where they are directly employed by people themselves. We advocate for basic human rights and oppose unfair treatment. Working in adult social care is a joy, but at times it takes huge resilience and strength.

This is why recognising, valuing, rewarding, supporting, and developing our adult social care workforce is central to the new Skills for Care strategy. If we want to sustain the amazing contribution to our communities that our workforce makes, we must recognise and value those relationships we build.

Leadership to take the strategy forward

As ADASS President, my ambition for this strategy is to support our work to reframe Adult Social Care and bring national recognition to the sector that employs skilled and committed people. The leadership and collaboration to get us to this point is noteworthy.  I want to see us continue to collaborate to recruit, develop, and invest in our people in a deliberate way that has longevity.  With national support, I’m confident we can make that happen.

Recognising the breath of roles in adult social care

The strategy recognises the different contributions made by different roles in Adult Social Care and makes specific recommendations about how we develop those roles. Our workforce involves those that work directly with people and those that enable that work to happen. We have care workers, support workers, personal assistants, commissioners, managers, domestics, directors, and many others.  This is an important step and ADASS is looking forward to developing a leadership framework for Directors.

Economic power of social care

Local Authorities have many roles – we are employers, commissioners, market shapers, place leaders, and economic developers. Our ability to deliver that will be greatly enhanced by a national workforce strategy that helps us tackle issues we cannot undertake alone. Clearly investment in our workforce is investment in people and will enable us to meet people’s care needs more effectively. But investing in the care workforce goes beyond that.  It has numerous social, economic and environmental benefits, not least raising pay in poorer areas and tackling a skills deficit in areas where care work is needed most.

Supporting our diverse workforce

It’s one of our strengths that we employ more people with protected characteristics than many other sectors, so the strategy’s commitment to equality and diversity is so important to us. For women, who undertake the majority of paid and unpaid care work, an expanded and better-paid workforce will also help to reduce gender inequality.

We recognise that our workforce faces many challenges and workplace harassment and violence is sadly a reality for many colleagues.  So it’s great to see the enthusiasm from a coalition of organisations across the sector to support employers with guidance on prioritising staff wellbeing and tackling these issues.

ADASS has long called for a fully-funded workforce plan. When asked which of the emerging workforce strategy recommendations would make the most difference to recruitment and retention, Directors said improving pay, terms and conditions and wellbeing support were the most important. It is with a sense of optimism and feeling on brink of action, that I am pleased to support the launch today.