Staff vacancy numbers in adult social care services fell last year, early data suggests.

As of December 2024, 7% of roles in independent sector adult social care providers in England lay vacant, down from 7.6% in April 2024, according to the Skills for Care (SfC’s) figures.

The data only covers those providers that have submitted figures to SfC’s adult social care workforce data set (ASC-WDS) for the relevant time period so is not representative of the sector as a whole.

SfC’s last sector-wide assessment measured the independent sector vacancy rate at 8.1% as of March 2024, down from 9.9% in 2023 and 10.7% in 2022.

Rapid fall in level of overseas recruitment

These falls were largely driven by the recruitment of staff from abroad. However, levels of international recruitment have fallen since March 2024, when the government banned adult social care staff on new or extended health and care visas from bringing partners or children to the UK.

According to SfC’s estimates, independent providers recruited 18,000 international staff from April to September 2024, compared with 105,000 in the year to March 2024, a fall of roughly two-thirds in the quarterly average.

Nevertheless, SfC data showed that the number of filled posts in independent providers rose from 575,000 to 585,000 from April to December 2024, alongside the apparent fall in vacancies.

Possible contributors to the trends include the 9.8% rise in the national living wage (NLW), from £10.42 to £11.44 an hour, in April 2024, which will have driven up pay across hundreds of thousands of care worker roles.

Concerns over potential care and job cuts

The NLW is due to rise again in April, by 6.7%, to £12.21 an hour. However, there is widespread sector concern that the measure, in combination with the planned increase in employer national insurance contributions, will lead to cuts to both levels of care and employment.

Almost two-thirds (64%) of organisations said they would need to make staff redundant, while 57% said they would have to hand care contracts back to councils and NHS commissioners on the back of the measures, according to a survey carried out last November by the Care Provider Alliance.

Think-tank the Nuffield Trust has estimated that the measures will cost providers in England £2.8bn in 2025-26, £2bn of which would need to be met by local authorities. Separately, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) has calculated that councils face £1.8bn in increased costs in adult social care in 2025-26 due to the two measures, and wider inflation.

The government has said that it is making available an extra £3.7bn for local authorities with adult social care responsibilities in 2025-26. However, only about £1.2bn of this is dedicated funding for the sector.

The number of overseas recruits to the social care sector has plummeted as a report highlights how reliant the sector has become on international staff.

From April to June this year, an estimated 8,000 international recruits joined the adult social care workforce in England, down from a quarterly average of 26,000 in 2023-24, according to data from Skills for Care.

The sharp drop started in the month after a ban came into place on overseas care staff bringing dependants with them when taking jobs on health and care worker visas.

How overseas care staff have improved workforce indicators

Skills for Care shared the figures today as its annual State of the Adult Social Care Sector and Workforce in England report for 2023-24 demonstrated that overseas staff had been largely responsible for reducing vacancy rates and cutting turnover to its lowest level in almost a decade.

In addition, international care staff were more likely to have achieved the entry level care certificate standards than domestic recruits, while they had also helped increase the proportion of men – a target group for recruitment – in the workforce.

However, despite the contribution of overseas staff, the adult social care vacancy rate (8.3%) was almost three times the economy-wide average, while just two in five care workers (41%) had a relevant qualification at level 2, a figure that has been stuck since 2020-21.

Average pay rises but social care still lags other sectors

Following a real-terms fall in average pay for staff in 2022-23 – as a result of high rates of inflation – median pay for independent sector care workers grew from £10.11 to £11.00 per hour as of March 2024, a rise worth 8.8% in cash terms and 5.7% in real terms. This was driven by a 9.7% cash increase in the national living wage (NLW), from £9.50 to £10.42 per hour, in April 2023.

However, the sector continued to lag behind most parts of the economy, with 80% of workers in the UK earning at least £11.54 as of November 2023, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures.

The news came as the government unveiled its Employment Rights Bill, which includes provisions to set up an adult social care negotiating body to determine pay and conditions in the sector, with a view to raising salaries.

A growing and more stable workforce with fewer vacancies

The number of filled adult social care posts, which fell for the first time in 2021-22, grew for the second consecutive year, from 1.635m in 2022-23 to 1.705m in 2023-24, a rise of 70,000 (4.2%).

This was driven by growing numbers of home care (42,000) and NHS roles (8,200), though there was a fall of 7,200 in the number of personal assistants, who are employed by direct payment recipients.

At the same time, the vacancy rate, which hit a peak of 10.6% in 2021-22 before falling to 9.9% in 2022-23, dipped again to 8.3% in 2023-24, equivalent to 131,000 roles.

As in previous years, the rate was considerably higher in domiciliary care (11.5%) and for direct payment recipients (11%), than in community care (6.2%), residential care (5.2%) or day care (4.9%).

The vacancy rate fell across all roles, with the highest percentage point fall being among care workers, where it dropped from 11.8% to 9.9%.

The workforce was also more stable, with the turnover rate across the independent and local authority sectors – who collectively employ 86% of the workforce – dropping from 29.1% in 2022-23 to 24.8% in 2023-24, the lowest level since 2014-15.

Positive trends driven by overseas staff 

Skills for Care said that these trends had largely been driven by overseas staff, on the back of the Conservative government’s decision to allow employers to recruit care workers from abroad via the health and care visa from February 2022.

From 2021-22 to 2023-24, the number of posts filled by staff who were from outside the EU rose by 160,000 (from 140,000 to 300,000), meaning their share of the workforce increased from 9% to 19%. Over the same period, the number of posts held by British nationals fell by 70,000, from 1,260,000 (84% of the workforce) to 1,190,000 (75%).

Employers who employed at least one non-British worker who arrived in the UK from April 2022 to March 2024 saw their turnover rate fall by 8.1 percentage points (from 41.5% to 33.4%) from 2021-22 to 2023-24. While employers who did not recruit internationally had a lower turnover rate to start with – 31.6% in 2021-22 – this only fell by 2.9 percentage points over the period (to 28.7%).

Similarly, employers who recruited internationally saw their vacancy rate fall from 12.8% to 8.5% over the two-year period – a drop of 4.3 percentage points – while the rate for other employers fell by only 1.2 percentage points, from 8.1% to 6.9%.

Qualifications and sickness absence gaps

Skills for Care also found significant gaps between international and British staff recruited in 2023-24 in relation to qualifications and levels of sickness absence.

While international recruits took an average of 2.5 days’ sickness absence during the year, domestic recruits took 9 days. Also, while 55% of those international recruits had completed the care certificate standards, which set basic expectations of care workers, by March 2024, this was true of 37% of British recruits.

International recruits also drove the rise in the proportion of men in the workforce, from 19% in 2022-23 to 21% in 2023-24, the highest level yet recorded. Men made up 29% of international recruits in 2023-24, but just 15% of domestic recruits.

Warning over ‘rapid’ decline in number of international recruits

Skills for Care chief executive Oonagh Smyth (photo from Skills for Care)

“On the face of it, the headline statistics paint a positive picture,” said Skills for Care chief executive Oonagh Smyth. “The workforce grew for the second consecutive year and we’ve seen the lowest turnover in a decade.”

“[But] the improvements in this year’s report are largely driven by international recruitment…and there is early evidence that the number of international recruits is rapidly falling.

“And it’s clear that social care is struggling to compete for staff in local labour markets so longstanding domestic recruitment and retention challenges exist.”

She added: “So we need to stem the tide of British care workers who are leaving their jobs and we can only do that by improving the quality of care roles so the sector can be more competitive in local job markets.”

Adult social care workforce strategy

In the summer, Skills for Care published a 15-year strategy for the workforce, designed to improve recruitment and retention in order to fill current gaps and meet the sector’s future needs, in the context of an ageing population.

The strategy, conceived by sector leaders, urged action to boost pay and qualification levels in the sector, along with measures to attract currently underrepresented groups, such as men and young people, into the workforce.

Skills for Care has set up an implementation unit to support adoption of the strategy’s recommendations. However, half of the recommendations are for government, either alone or in partnership with others.

No funding plan for pay improvements

While the Employment Rights Bill is designed to boost pay and conditions for adult social care staff, the government has not set out how it will fund local authority and NHS commissioners to pass on the required increases in fees to enable providers to deliver on these improvements.

This is the context of providers already warning that they are significantly under-resourced to deliver services. For example, the Homecare Association has calculated that there there is a £1bn gap between the home care fees paid by commissioners and the amount required by providers in England to pay staff the NLW.

Meanwhile, in relation to training and qualifications, the Labour administration has cut funding levels for 2024-25 by £115m relative to its Conservative predecessor’s plans.

The government has cut £115m from planned funding for adult social care training and development this year.

As a result, funding will be cut for social work apprenticeships, far fewer care staff will be able to gain baseline qualifications and there will be no additional resourcing of continuing professional development (CPD) for regulated professionals, such as nurses.

Scale of funding cut revealed

The scale of the funding cut has been shared with providers on the Department of Health and Social Care’s workforce advisory group, who were told that the DHSC would be spending about £24m on social care workforce development in 2024-25.

The news follows care minister Stephen Kinnock’s announcement in late July that the government would be scrapping its Conservative predecessor’s adult social care training and development fund, instead maintaining workforce development funding for the sector at 2023-24 levels.

The decision was among a number taken by ministers to address a £22bn hole in the public finances for 2024-25 they said they had inherited from the Conservatives, £9.4bn of which relates to Labour’s decision to meet the recommendations of independent public sector pay review bodies.

New baseline qualification for social care

The training and development fund, announced by the Conservative government in April, would have provided £53.9m to put up to 37,000 care staff – roughly 3% of the workforce – through the new level 2 care certificate, from June 2024 to March 2025.

The certificate, launched in June, is designed to provide staff with baseline skills and knowledge and address the fact that  just 54% of care workers had a relevant social care qualification as of March 2023 (source: Skills for Care).

The fund would have also reimbursed providers for putting care staff through a range of other specified courses or qualifications and resourced CPD for regulated practitioners. The Conservatives did not confirm a total value for the fund before it left office in early July.

How training offer has been scaled back

Last week, the DHSC announced its replacement, the adult social care learning and development support scheme (LDSS).

Like the planned training and development fund, this will enable providers to reimburse the costs of staff training for specified courses, including the care certificate.

However, it differs in several key respects:

• Overall funding for the LDSS in 2024-25 is £12m, less than a quarter of what the Tories allocated to resourcing care certificate training alone under the training and development fund.
• Unlike the training and development fund, there is no dedicated funding for the care certificate under the LDSS and no target for the number of staff obtaining it.
• The cap on what each employer can claim is £400,000 under the LDSS, compared with £4.5m for the training and development fund.
• There is no funding available for CPD for regulated professionals under the LDSS.

The DHSC has also scrapped the second round of its fund dedicated to supporting councils recruit social work apprentices in adults’ services. 

Other DHSC-funded training for social care staff

Alongside the LDSS, employers can also claim payments from the longstanding workforce development fund (WDF), for eligible courses that started before 31 March 2024 and that will conclude by 31 March 2025. The WDF, which is DHSC funded and delivered by Skills for Care, is being wound up this year.

The DHSC is also providing funding for regulated social care providers to meet their legal requirement to ensure staff receive learning disability and autism training appropriate to their role, through the delivery of Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training.

The DHSC will provide further details on this later this year.

In his statement in July, Kinnock also pledged to continue the development of the care workforce pathway, a new career structure for social care initiated by the Conservatives.

Funding cut ‘another setback for the sector’

Homecare Association chief executive Jane Townson described the £115m funding cut as “another setback for the sector”, and said the allocated £24m “[fell] far short of addressing the sector’s critical needs”.

“We appreciate the clarity provided on some continuing programmes, such as the care workforce pathway and the newly launched adult social care level 2 care certificate,” Townson added.

“However, significant uncertainties remain, particularly regarding the implementation of Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training.”

Enhancing social care staff skills ‘of critical importance’

A DHSC spokesperson said: “This government is being honest about the appalling economic circumstances we inherited, but we are determined to grip the crisis in social care and implement the longer-term reforms needed to create a sustainable national care service.”

Creating a national care service is Labour’s long-term aim for the sector, but it is yet to flesh out what this means in practice beyond establishing national standards to ensure consistency of care across the country.

The spokesperson added: “Enhancing skills for staff working in social care is of critical importance to this, and we want that care to be of outstanding quality – fair, personalised and accessible.”

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
The new Labour government has scrapped a planned increase in funding for adult social care training.

It has culled the adult social care training and development fund announced by its Conservative predecessor earlier this year, care minister Stephen Kinnock revealed in a parliamentary statement today.

The fund would have provided £53.9m to put up to 37,000 care staff through the new level 2 care certificate, from June 2024 to March 2025.

The Conservatives were planning to supplement this with resource to support continuing professional development for regulated professionals, such as occupational therapists, but had not confirmed a figure for this.

In his statement, Kinnock said the government would continue to develop the care workforce pathway – a new career structure for the workforce initiated by the Conservatives – while the level 2 care certificate would also remain. It would also continue to support Care Quality Commission-regulated providers to fulfil their statutory requirements to train their staff in learning disabilities and autism, known as Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training.

Kinnock added that Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) funding for adult social care training would return to 2023-24 levels, though it is unclear what this is. The main DHSC-funded training resource, the workforce development fund, has traditionally received about £11m a year from the department, though this was boosted in 2023-24 by the Conservatives.

Second cut to adult social care funding in consecutive days

Kinnock’s statement comes a day after chancellor Rachel Reeves’ announcement that Labour would scrap the planned cap on care costs and associated adult social care charging reform, saving £1.1bn by the end of 2025-26.

This is designed fill a black hole in the public finances she said had been left by the Tory government – a claim vigorously rejected by former chancellor Jeremy Hunt.

Kinnock used a similar argument to Reeves in his statement.

“This government is being honest about the appalling economic circumstances we inherited, and takes seriously its responsibility to help manage down overall fiscal pressures in 2024-25. As a result, we have decided that the adult social care training and development fund proposed by the last government, decisions around which had been suspended since the announcement of the election, will not be continued.”

However, as with Reeves’s announcement, Kinnock’s met with significant criticism from the adult social care sector.

‘Desperately shortsighted’

“Taking away limited funding that had been set aside for upskilling and training much needed social care staff looks desperately shortsighted and is a significant blow for the sector,” said Natasha Curry, director of policy at think-tank the Nuffield Trust.

“We urgently need to invest in staff to reinforce the skills required to build a strong and sustainable workforce that can meet growing and changing need in our society. Having aspirations to implement a care career pathway and encourage uptake of a new care qualification will remain mere aspirations unless dedicated investment underpins them.”

The decision was also criticised by the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG), which represents charitable providers of care to disabled people.

“We need investment in funding to directly enhance pay and to continue to develop the workforce to improve quality and outcomes for people who use care and support services,” said VODG chief executive Rhidian Hughes.

“This latest decision to cull the adult social care training and development fund, risks coming back to bite given the scale of the workforce challenges facing the country,” he added.

The charity Sense, which runs care homes and supported living services, described the decision as “deeply disappointing”.

“Social care is stuck in a perfect storm of a funding and staffing crisis due to years of under-investment, making it hard for providers to prioritise training,” said its policy adviser, Evan John. “Yet training can be an essential part of keeping the right people in care and providing them with the skills to give disabled people the best life possible.”

Social care workforce strategy

The decision also follows the launch earlier this month of a 15-year workforce strategy for the sector, developed by Skills for Care, which called for a significant expansion in the provision of training to care staff.

It specifically said that the DHSC should continue to roll out the care certificate qualification to support new starters to achieve a level 2 qualification (equivalent to a good GCSE), with the aim of  80% of new direct care staff holding the qualification within five years (2029).

As of March 2023, just 42% of care workers held a level 2 qualification.

Skills for Care ‘disappointed’

Skills for Care welcomed the government’s ongoing commitment to the care certificate, the care workforce pathway and learning disability and autism training.

However, it’s chief executive, Oonagh Smyth said: “While we understand the financial pressures the Government is facing, we were disappointed to hear the announcement about the adult social care training and development fund.

“We’ve offered to support the government in any way we can to ensure the sector can access the promised continuing funding as quickly as possible. Being able to access quality learning and development is vital for ensuring the people working in social care have the skills to provide the best possible care and support – and we also know from our data that it encourages people to stay in their jobs and the sector.”

Overseas recruitment has driven a second consecutive annual increase in the size of the adult social care workforce, Skills for Care has reported.

The number of filled posts in the sector grew by 70,000, from 1.635m to 1.705m, while the number of vacancies fell from 153,000 (9.9%) to 131,000 (8.3%), in the year to March 2024, according to latest figures from the workforce development body.

Vacancy levels hit an all-time high of 164,000 (10.6%) in March 2022, following a year in which the size of the workforce fell for the first time since records began.

The growth over the subsequent two years has been driven by the previous government’s decision to enable providers to recruit care staff from abroad on skilled worker visas from February 2022.

Growth in number of overseas staff

Skills for Care reported that independent sector providers recruited 105,000 people from overseas into direct care roles in 2023-24, up from 80,000 in 2022-23 and just 20,000 in 2021-22.

Over that time, the number of staff from outside the EU working in the sector almost doubled, from 140,000 to 300,000, while the number of British staff fell by 70,000, from 1.26m to 1.19m.

The figures do not take account of the outgoing government’s decision to bar overseas care workers on health and care visa from bringing family dependants with them, which came into force on 11 March this year.

However, Skills for Care said the announcement of these changes, in December 2023, appeared to have resulted in a sharp drop in the number of health and care visas issued, from an average of 26,000 per quarter in 2023 to 3,300 in the first quarter of 2024.

‘Challenging’ for sector to grow given international recruitment fall

“Early evidence suggests that changes to immigration rules in March 2024 will result in much lower levels of international recruitment in 2024-25 in the adult social care sector.

“Given this possibility, and the ongoing difficulties with domestic recruitment, it will be challenging for the sector to continue to grow in-line with demand in 2024-25.”

Skills for Care issued the figures on the day that it launched its 15-year strategy for the future of the adult social care workforce, developed with leaders from across the sector.

This projected that the sector would need an additional 540,000 posts from 2023 to 2040, a growth of 29%, because of the increase in the number of older people over that time, but that England needed to become less reliant on overseas staff because of global competition for care workers.

Vacancy rate remains high

While the sector’s vacancy rate has come down, it remains, at 8.3%, three times of the average for the wider economy (2.8%) and significantly higher than for competitor sectors, such as retail (2.4%), accommodation and food (4%) and the NHS (6.9%), said Skills for Care.

Vacancy rates fell across all parts of adult social care in 2023-24, but they remained much higher in domiciliary care (11.9%) than in nursing or residential homes (5%).

However, independent domiciliary care providers accounted for the majority of the growth in filled posts (43,000 of 70,000), an increase of 7.9%. This compares with growth of 5.3% in independent nursing homes (15,000 roles), 3% in local authorities (3,500) and 2.4% in residential homes (7,000).

The one area in which employment contracted was for personal assistants, whose number fell by 7,000 (5%), reflecting the year-on-year drop in the number of people receiving direct payments, from 230,000 in 2020 to 211,000 in 2023.

State of pay in adult social care

The report followed the new Labour government’s announcement last week that it would legislate to introduce a “fair pay agreement” for adult social care staff, designed to improve pay and conditions in the sector.

In the same week, think-tanks the Health Foundation and Nuffield Trust produced a report on options to raise pay in the sector. This set out that, in 2023, in the independent sector:

• The median hourly rate was £11 for care workers and £11.78 for senior care workers,12 compared with £15.88 for all UK workers.
• Care workers with five or more years’ experience were paid just 8p per hour more than those with less than a year’s experience.
• The median hourly pay for the top 10% of earners was just £1.74 more than that for the bottom 10% of earners.

Impact of pay on employment

Skills for Care’s strategy, meanwhile, indicated that a significant boost to pay, for example would be needed to meet adult social care’s recruitment needs over the coming years.

It said a 5% rise in real wages in the sector could increase employment levels by 9-11%, according to research published this year from the University of Kent and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

In the strategy, Skills for Care set out options for raising pay, ranging from simply enforcing the national living wage (NLW) more tightly to setting a sector minimum wage above the NLW and tying social care pay to the higher levels of remuneration for NHS staff performing similar roles.

Costs and benefits of pay rises

With the exception of the tighter enforcement of the NLW, the measures would significantly increase public spending on social care.

For example, setting a sector minimum that was £1 hour above the NLW, while also ensuring that those with three years’ experience received an additional £2 an hour, would cost the state £2bn a year or £30.9bn over 15 years.

However, according to Skills for Care’s analysis, the measure would mean 264,000 more staff would be recruited and 435,000 more retained over 15 years, generating £4.2bn in savings on recruitment for providers.

In addition, the NHS would save £3.9bn over the period from not having to support people who would be having their needs met by adult social care, while there would also be £29.5bn in “wellbeing benefits” for the people receiving care as a result of the expansion in the workforce.

Government plans ‘to properly reward hard work’

Labour is yet to set out how much it will invest in its fair pay agreement plan.

In a response to the Skills for Care strategy, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are determined to tackle head-on the significant challenges social care faces.

“Social care workers make an enormous contribution to society and that’s why we have committed to establishing a fair pay agreement to properly reward their hard work and attract more people to the sector.”

Responding to the latest workforce data, Simon Bottery, senior fellow at think-tank The King’s Fund, said: “International recruitment has provided the only real relief to this situation but with the tightening of regulations there are real concerns that this source of workers will now dry up, leaving a huge problem for providers and – most importantly – the hundreds of thousands of people who rely on and request social care services.

“Government plans to mandate higher pay for social care staff…will help make care worker roles more attractive. Wider action will still be needed, both to shore up social care with additional funding, and to develop a comprehensive, longer-term approach to the care workforce that focuses on recruitment and retention. The new Skills for Care workforce strategy will be a first step towards this.”

The government has launched a £16m fund to tackle the exploitation of overseas adult social care staff.

The resource is an extension of the international recruitment fund for the adult social care sector, issued last year to help councils and providers increase the employment of overseas staff.

However, for 2024-25, the Department of Health and Social Care has switched the focus of the fund to preventing and responding to unethical employment practices concerning international recruits.

Growth in number of overseas care staff

Overseas staff played a vital role in cutting adult social care vacancy numbers from a record 164,000 in March 2022 to 152,000 a year later, on the back of the government allowing employers to recruit care workers from abroad through its health and care visa.

Approximately 70,000 international recruits started working in direct care roles in the independent sector from 2022-23, up from 20,000 the year before, with a further estimated 30,000-40,000 doing so from April to August last year (source: Skills for Care).

However, the growth in the number of overseas staff has been accompanied by concerns that many are being exploited.

Exploitation concerns

In her 2023-24 strategy, the government’s director of labour market enforcement, Margaret Beels, reported increased use of illegal recruitment fees, debt bondage – where people work for little or no money to pay off a debt – wage underpayment and other forms of labour exploitation within social care.

This has been echoed by the Gangmasters & Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA), whose role is to investigate worker exploitation.

“The GLAA has seen a significant increase in the information it has received relating to labour exploitation in the care sector over the last couple of years and has more than 30 ongoing investigations,” said national investigations lead Martin Plimmer in December of last year.

Abuses included charging for work-finding fees both in the UK and abroad, breaches of student visa schemes, placing staff in cramped and unsuitable accommodation and subjecting them to debt bondage, he added.

Also, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), in its annual state of care report for 2022-23, said it appeared that a “small number of providers” were exploiting staff, including by tying accommodation, transport or food to jobs, excessive sponsorship fees, long working hours and poor pay.

Supporting staff forced out of jobs

Such abuses can lead to the revocation of providers’ sponsorship licence, which enables them to recruit from abroad; however, this leaves sponsored staff without a job.

The DHSC said a key aim of its international recruitment fund in 2024-25 was to support staff in this position find “alternative, ethical employment”.

The funding will be allocated to regional partnerships of councils and care provider alliances – headed by a lead local authority – who will be expected to set up a mailbox for overseas care workers to contact should they lose their jobs. They should also provide staff with pastoral support, for example, through buddying schemes with other international workers, it added.

In addition, the department said partnerships should monitor data around licence suspensions and revocations among local providers and disseminate information to affected local authorities so they can tackle ensuing caps in workforce capacity.

It said they should also take steps to prevent care worker exploitation, including by supporting providers’ compliance with visa conditions.

The DHSC has set out indicative funding allocations for the partnerships, which have already been constituted. The lead local authority must submit an application for funding by 28 May 2024, with the DHSC agreeing funding as soon as possible after bids are received.

Concerns over fall in overseas recruitment

Alongside the funding, the government has also introduced a requirement for providers to be CQC registered to be able to sponsor overseas workers, to crack down on abuses of workers through the creation of fake care agencies.

This was part of wider reforms, announced in December 2023, to reduce levels of migration that included barring care workers who take up jobs using the health and care visa from bringing dependants with them.

Though these only came into force in April 2024, they have been linked to a fall in the number of people applying from abroad to work in adult social care and health. From December 2023 to March 2024, there were 16,600 applications from health and care visas, less than a third of the number who applied over the previous four months (55,400).

While these numbers are not broken down between health and adult social care, they likely represent a significant cut in overseas recruitment into the latter sector.

In response to the numbers, independent provider representative body Care England’s chief executive, Martin Green, said the sector had been left to “pick up the pieces” from the government’s immigration reforms.

He added: “These figures only serve to renew the need for meaningful workforce reforms that make the sector an attractive destination for domestic staff if we are going to shut off the route for overseas recruitment.”

Increasing qualifications levels for the adult social care workforce – linked to higher pay – is among the ideas under consideration by the group developing a 15-year strategy for the adult social care workforce.

Other potential proposals include providing registered managers with a supported year in which to develop, developing a graduate training scheme for that role or making it a degree-level position.

The ideas were shared last week by David Pearson, co-chair of the steering group developing the strategy, in a session at the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services spring seminar.

The strategy is being developed by the group, which Pearson co-chairs with Oonagh Smyth, chief executive of Skills for Care, the organisation responsible for the plan.

Though the Department of Health and Social Care is not directing the strategy, it has representation on the group, alongside ADASS, the British Association of Social Workers, Social Work England, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and provider umbrella body the Care Provider Alliance, among others.

‘No important thing for sector than workforce strategy’

Pearson, a former director and ADASS president, said he thought there was “no more important thing for adult social care at this time, given the stats and the pressures” than the workforce strategy.

He cited the sector’s 9.9% vacancy rate, as of March 2023 (source: Skills for Care) – compared to an economy-wide average of 3% (Office for National Statistics) – and the fact that 28% of staff (about 390,000) left their jobs each year (Skills for Care). The turnover rate was far higher among young people, at 53.7%.

“We’ve got a bit of a leaky bucket,” said Pearson. “A lot of people leave. We need to be equipping people to develop their careers.”

Pay and development key to retention

Pearson said there was evidence of what worked in promoting retention.

He cited Skills for Care analysis showing that turnover among independent sector care staff was more than twice as high when a worker lacked all of five elements – being paid more than the minimum wage, having access to training, having a qualification, being able to work full-time and not being on a zero-hours contract – compared to having all five.

Photo: Yurii Kibalnik/Adobe Stock

“This shows that there are a number of things that are in the gift of the sector if we choose to do it,” he added.

Pearson said the steering group was looking at how to enhance training and development among adult social care staff. One idea under consideration was to set a requirement or expectation for staff to be at least level 3 qualified (equivalent to A level) within three years of joining the sector, with such progression linked to higher pay.

Current qualification levels

Making social care a level 3 sector would be a significant step up from the current situation, in which just an estimated quarter of the workforce (excluding regulated professionals, who require a degree) held at least this tier of qualification as of March 2023 (Skills for Care).

It also exceeds the DHSC’s aim to make adult social care a level 2 sector (equivalent to a good GCSE), by rolling out its new care certificate qualification.

Even this is ambitious, with an estimated 43% of the non-regulated workforce holding at least a level 2 qualification as of March 2023 (Skills for Care).

As well as tying the suggested level 3 qualification to enhanced pay, the steering group is considering proposing that pay differentials more generally are tied to a worker’s development.

This would also mark a significant shift from the status quo, with Skills for Care data showing that an independent sector care worker with five years’ experience or more earned just 6p per hour more than one with less than a year’s time on the job.

Enhancing registered manager role

Another possible recommendation in the strategy would be enhancing the role of providers’ registered managers, either by making it a degree-level job, creating a graduate trainee scheme for the position or introducing a supported year of development for new recruits.

According to Skills for Care, services without a registered manager in post at the time of an inspection were less likely to receive a outstanding or good rating from the CQC during 2022-23. However,  the vacancy rate for registered manager roles was 10.6% as of March 2023, while the role had a turnover rate of 23.2% in 2022-23, said the workforce development body.

Currently, the CQC requires that registered managers have “the necessary qualifications, competence, skills and experience to manage the regulated activity”, but does not specify a qualification level.

Skills for Care recommends that they take the level 5 (degree level) diploma in leadership and management in adult social care, however, as of March 2023, an estimated 44% of registered managers did not have at least this level of qualification.

Strategy ‘will require extra investment’

Pearson acknowledged that the strategy, due to be published in July, would require extra investment in adult social care but said that the steering group’s intention was that it would be “fully costed”.

Photo: chrupka/Adobe Stock

“It’s our intention to come up with something that is robust, credible, evidence-based and has the right costings associated with it and an understanding that this cannot be provided unless the extra money is there,” he added.

With an election due by January 2024, Pearson said the steering group was engaging with the major political parties to understand their thinking on the adult social care workforce.

While the government has allocated £250m from 2023-25 to develop the adult social care workforce, this is a cut from its original plan of providing £500m from 2022-25.

Funding pressures

And though care workers have seen their wages rise in real terms over the past two years, due to consecutive 10% increases in the national living wage (NLW), councils are struggling to cover the costs in the fees they pay providers.

As providers must ensure staff receive at least the NLW (now £11.44 an hour) by law, this means they will struggle to maintain current pay differentials, let alone increase them to reward experience and qualifications.

In addition, with public sector net debt worth about 98% of national income as of March this year (source: Office for National Statistics) and taxation levels set to hit a post-war high in 2028-29 (source: Office for Budget Responsibility), the next government is likely to be wary of raising spending outside of priority areas such as the NHS and defence.

Pearson said that the steering group was looking to craft a message that enabled the next government to start implementing the strategy without being deterred by the costs.

“There’s something nuanced here that we enable progress to be made without saying in the first three weeks there’s a billion pound bill that no government can afford,” he said. “It’s better to come up with something we can start on, as well as a sector and with any government, rather than something that people say is too difficult.”

The government has set out some of the details of its new fund for subsidising training for adult social care staff.

Adult social care providers who directly employ care staff, including councils, will be able to claim up to £4.5m each towards training courses for care staff and continuing professional development (CPD) for regulated practitioners in 2024-25.

Though the full value of the adult social care training and development fund will not be revealed until the summer, it will be significantly more resourced than its predecessor, the workforce development fund (WDF), said the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

However, the DHSC original plan to invest £500m in boosting the skills, career development and wellbeing of the adult social care workforce from 2022-25 has been scaled back to spending £250m from 2023-25, of which the new fund is a part.

Funding for care staff training and professionals’ CPD

The funding covers learning undertaken from April 2024 to March 2025 and will be split into two: a care skills element to subsidise training courses for staff in non-regulated roles, such as care workers and registered managers of provider services; and a revalidation element to finance CPD for regulated professionals.

Details of the latter will be announced in the summer and it is not clear as yet whether it will cover CPD for social workers. The DHSC has implied that it will be just for nurses, occupational therapists, nursing associates and allied health professionals, such as physiotherapists and speech and language therapists, working in adult social care.

Setting out the details of the care skills element this week, the DHSC said the fund would provide reimbursements of between £55 and £2,035 for almost 200 specific courses. These cover skills areas such as assessment, commissioning and training other staff; learning about particular conditions or areas of need, such as dementia, learning disabilities, stroke or autism; and general adult care  qualifications at a range of different levels.

Employers, who must be registered with the adult social care workforce data set to access funding, will be able to claim reimbursements through an online claims service, run by the NHS Business Services Authority and launched this summer.

Reimbursements will generally be made following course completions and paid regardless of whether the learner passes or not. They will not be available for course repeats.

Tackling low levels of qualification in sector

The DHSC is providing £53.9m in 2024-25 specifically to support up to 37,000 direct care staff complete a level 2 adult social care certificate, which will be launched in June and will be overseen by Skills for Care.

The certificate is designed to address the issue that, as of March 2023, 54% of adult social care staff did not have a relevant qualification and just 42% of care staff had a qualification at level 2 (equivalent to a good GCSE) or above, down from 49% in March 2018.

It is also aiming to address the lack of consistency in the delivery of the existing care certificate, which leads to staff having to redo training when they change employers.

The DHSC will provide a maximum £1,500 subsidy to each learner who enrols on the level 2 certificate up to March 2025, with the course expected to take about 369 hours to complete.

While it is open to staff who already have a relevant qualification, employers will be encouraged to prioritise those who do not.

The workforce development fund (WDF), which has provided about £11m a year in subsidies for adult social care training courses, will be wound up in 2024-25. Funding is only available to learners who started on or before 31 March 2024 and who receive their certificate of completion by 31 March 2025.

The government will give councils funding to train more staff as social workers in adults’ services through apprenticeships.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) will give councils and adult social care providers just over £20m between them to fund social work and nursing apprenticeships in 2024-25.

The DHSC announced the funding yesterday, alongside its plan to develop a career pathway for adult social care staff, backed by £53.9m in 2024-25 to fund 37,000 care workers to take a new level 2 qualification (see below).

Both the apprenticeships and pathway funding pots come from £250m the DHSC has set aside to develop the adult social care workforce from 2023-25, a cut from £500m it had originally earmarked for the purpose from 2022-25.

Cut to workforce funding 

The original £500m package had included a plan to train more adult social workers through new routes into the profession, which had been designed to boost the workforce in line with the demands of the planned adult social care charging reforms.

This was ditched after the reforms were delayed by two years – to October 2025 – but the DHSC has now confirmed that at least some of the remaining workforce development funding will go on training new social workers.

This comes with vacancy rates for council adult social workers having risen in recent years, to 11.6% as of September 2022, amid consistently high waiting lists for assessments and reviews, which has been linked to practitioner shortages.

Chief social worker hails announcement

The DHSC’s chief social worker for adults, Lyn Romeo, welcomed the investment in apprenticeships.

“It recognises how essential it is that we attract and support social workers into local authority adult social care departments to work with people and their families to ensure they get the best possible support to live the lives that matter to them,” said Romeo, who retires at the end of this month.

Lyn Romeo (photo: DHSC)

“The apprenticeship route into social work allows people to work and contribute to social care delivery while completing their social work professional qualification.

“This investment provides local authorities with opportunities to recruit more social work apprentices and will help them build a long-term sustainable workforce for the future.

About social work apprenticeships

Social work apprenticeships are degree-level qualifications that generally take three years, with apprentices spending at least 20% of their time in off-the-job training, delivered by a university or other learning provider.

They spend the rest of the time carrying out their substantive role, though employers also arrange social work placements for them, in line with Social Work England’s requirements for students to do 200 days of practice learning across their course.

Generally, for local authorities, the training costs of apprenticeships – though not other costs, such as salaries – are funded through the apprenticeship levy, a 0.5% charge on the pay bill of larger employers, from which they can then draw down resources for training.

However, in this case, some councils will be able to make use of the DHSC funding for at least some of the social work apprenticeships they fund during 2024-25. This is similar to the Department for Education providing funding of 461 social work apprenticeships for 79 local authority children’s services departments.

New career pathway for care staff

Alongside the apprenticeship announcement, the DHSC unveiled the first phase of its care workforce pathway – a new career framework for adult social care.

This set out four categories for direct care and support roles – new to care, care or support worker, supervisor or leader and practice leader – and required behaviours, expected knowledge and skills, broad responsibilities and potential learning opportunities for each.

Alongside this, the DHSC announced the establishment of a level 2 care certificate, which will be launched in June 2024 and which the department intends to become the baseline qualification for all new care or support workers to work towards.

Recognising care work as ‘skilled profession’

It has provided £53.9m to enable 37,000 staff to enroll on the qualification between June 2024 and March 2025.

Care minister Helen Whately (photo: Lauren Hurley/ DHSC)

Care minister Helen Whately said the measures recognised social care “as the skilled profession it is”, and would “give brilliant care workers the chance to develop rewarding careers” in the sector.

They come with the latest Skills for Care data showing that the proportion of care workers with a level 2 qualification had fallen from 49% to 42% from 2018-23, with half having no relevant qualifications.

Whately pointed to analysis by the workforce development body showing that turnover rates were lower where employers provided staff with access to learning opportunities and qualifications.

The same assessment also showed turnover levels were shaped by whether staff were working full-time, on zero-hours contracts or on pay levels above the national living wage, and sector bodies warned the pathway would not succeed without action on salaries.

Lack of pay progression

Pay levels for many care workers are due to increase significantly in April this year, when the national living wage (NLW) rises by 9.8%, from £10.42 to £11.44 per hour, and is applied, for the first time, to those aged 21 and 22.

However, not only have council leaders warned that they have not received additional funding to finance the rise for the providers they commission, but NLW increases do nothing to address the lack of pay progression in the sector.

On average, care workers with at least five years’ experience are paid just six pence (0.6%) more per hour than those with less than a year’s experience, according to Skills for Care.

Third sector provider body the National Care Forum’s chief executive, Vic Rayner, said: “The commitment to train nearly 40,000 staff is a step up from the current position but represents under 10% of all new starters in the sector, and of course none of these commitments come with any focus on moving us closer to a set of pay, terms and conditions that match the skills and expertise laid out in the new pathway.

“The role of a care worker is complex and skilled – and a pathway without an accompanying properly funded pay structure will do little to attract and retain people to progress through the career structure.”

The Voluntary Organisations Disability Group, which also represents not-for-profit providers, issued a similar message.

“To fully realise the benefits from the workforce pathway we must see social care adequately funded,” said its chief executive, Rhidian Hughes. “This will enable organisations to make real investment in workforce development and pay over the long term, thereby encouraging workforce development and progression.

‘The government has consistently refused to provide the funding and certainty that not-for-profit organisations desperately need to increase care worker pay. Consequently, third sector providers are left in an impossible situation; committed to delivering high quality support but struggling to fill staff vacancies and facing operating costs rising above commissioned fee rates.”

Government plans to prevent overseas care staff from bringing family members with them to the UK risks worsening the sector’s already significant staff shortages.

That was the message from sector bodies yesterday after home secretary James Cleverly announced a raft of policies designed to cut annual net migration from a high of 745,000 in 2022.

This included a bar on care workers who take up jobs using the health and care visa bringing dependants with them, as they are currently permitted to do.

It will also prevent providers who are not Care Quality Commission-registered from sponsoring workers, in response to significant concerns about workers being exploited by recruiters running fake care agencies. The changes will come into force next spring.

The government said that, in the year to September 2023, it issued visas to 101,000 care workers and senior care workers, and to 120,000 dependants accompanying them, about a quarter of whom were in work.

Overseas care staff instrumental in cutting vacancy levels

Overseas staff were instrumental in a slight reduction in adult social care vacancies – from 164,000 to 152,000 – and increase in filled posts, from 1.615m to 1.635m, between March 2022 and March 2023.

During that time, 70,000 overseas staff were recruited into direct care roles by independent providers in England through the health and care visa, many more than the 20,000 year-on-year increase in filled posts across the sector as a whole.

Cleverly told the House of Commons yesterday that he did not envisage that the measures would have a negative impact on the social care workforce.

International recruitment ‘displacing British care staff’

He claimed overseas staff were displacing British workers, as the number of people coming in on visas was less than the overall increase in the workforce last year.

James Cleverly

He also said the government suspected that there was “significant surplus demand” from overseas staff to work in the UK care sector.

This would mean that anyone dissuaded by the restrictions on bringing in dependants would likely be replaced by someone without family commitments, he added.

“So, we don’t envisage there being a significant reduction in demand because of the changes that we’ve made, but it will mean that we have the care workers that we need but not the estimated 120,000 other people who have, in the most recent year, come in,” said Cleverly.

However, his confidence was not shared by sector bodies.

Government ‘severing lifeline’ for sector

The Care Provider Alliance (CPA), a coalition of 11 representative bodies across all provider sectors, said the government was “severing the lifeline of international recruitment”.

“This is currently the only option we have to maintain and increase workforce numbers, as recruitment in the UK remains challenging,” said CPA chair Jane Townson.

“If care workforce numbers fall and providers cease to operate, unmet need will escalate. Not only will this lead to individual and family suffering, but it will increase pressure on council and NHS services and further extend waiting lists.”

The Care and Support Alliance (CSA), which represents over 60 charities for older people, disabled people and carers, issued a similar message.

‘Action needed to make care roles attractive to UK staff’

“Too many people in need struggle to access good care as it is, and the risk is that today’s announcement will make the situation worse,” said CSA co-chair Caroline Abrahams, who is also charity director of Age UK.

“It is facile for any policymaker to suggest that there are ample numbers of people already based here to fill the gaps in the social care workforce, without also agreeing to the action needed to make these roles more attractive domestically in terms of pay and conditions.”

In his autumn statement last month, chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced a 9.8% rise in the national living wage, from £10.42 to £11.44 an hour, next April, a move which will benefit many thousands of care staff.

However, Townson warned that, without extra funding, councils and NHS commissioners would not be able to pay providers sufficiently to cover the rise.

Latest call for more investment into sector

Both the CPA and CSA urged the government to significantly increase adult social care funding to reduce the sector’s reliance on migration.

The government’s response to the many such calls it has heard over recent months is to point to £8.1bn it has made available to councils to invest in social care from 2023-25.

However, £1.6bn of this is reliant on authorities raising council tax by the maximum permitted amount and about £1.3bn is expected to be spent on children’s services.

Social care was spared further restrictions on immigration that will apply to other sectors. People with a health and care visa will be exempt from a sharp increase in the minimum salary required of skilled migrants from next spring, from £26,200 to £38,700.

Currently, care workers and senior care workers are allowed to come in on a reduced salary – £20,960 – on the grounds that they are on the government’s shortage occupation list (SOL).

As part of his announcement yesterday, Cleverly announced a review of the SOL to reduce the number of occupations it covered.