Oonagh Smyth, CEO, Skills for Care, discusses the reasons we should place more value on social care, and the risks of not doing so.
People who work in social care provide one of the most important services for our communities. They help us, our families, and friends to live the lives that we want in the way that we choose. They help people to connect with their communities, to enjoy their favourite hobbies, to look after themselves, and to live in a place that they call home.
They also play a vital role in helping people stay well for longer and support our health system by preventing escalating needs. This reduces emergency health admissions to hospital.
For those of us working in social care, or people drawing on care and support, it seems almost unfathomable that such a service could ever be undervalued.
But we know that people who don’t feel directly impacted by social care might not fully understand what it really means – after all it is a complex world, and without fully understanding something we can’t really value it.
Some might say ‘well that’s just the way it is’, but the impact of social care being undervalued goes far beyond making us feel a little bit like the underdog.
There is some debate about the cause of this lack of value. It could be driven by a lack of value from society for people drawing on social care such as disabled or older people. If we don’t value people drawing on social care, then we are less likely to value people supporting them. The lack of value might be because people are too afraid to think about their own potential social care needs in the future – unlike healthcare which most people accept that they will need at some stage of their lives, people do not want to think that they will need social care.
Regardless of the reason, we need people to truly understand and appreciate the importance of social care. Without this, we will not have the investment or reform that we need. We will also struggle to get people to come and work in social care if they never hear what a wonderful experience they can have, where they can choose to support people every day as a care worker or a personal assistant; to specialise in things like learning disability, autism or dementia care; or to move up the rungs in some of our larger providers, moving to a registered manager post, a regulated professional role such as social worker, occupational therapist, nurse, or leading many thousands of people.
We need to showcase what the people working in social care are doing each day, the difference they’re making, and the skills they have which allow them to do this effectively. Not everyone can work in social care – it is a deeply skilled role and it really needs the right people with the right values and behaviours.
People need to feel valued for the work that they do in order to be happy in their roles, and if people aren’t happy they’ll leave.
Our latest data tells us that the number of filled posts in social care i.e., roles with a person working in them, is down for the first time on record (with records dating back to 2012/13).
On top of this we have a growing demand for care. Our data tells us that if the social care workforce grows proportionally to the projected number of people aged 65 and over in the population then the number of posts will need to increase by around 480,000 posts to around 2.27 million by 2035. We have an ageing workforce, right now the average age of people working in care is 44. This means that a large percentage of our workforce may be considering retiring soon.
These data combined, point to the fact that we need to attract new people to social care, and we need to keep them. We need to attract younger people to work in social care and show them why it is a career of value and a career in which they will be valued by others.
Looking beyond the personal value that our social care workers bring to our communities, social care also makes a sizeable economic contribution our society.
Our ‘Economic value report’ found that adult social care contributes at least £50.3 billion to the economy in England. If potential recruits knew that social care was more valuable to the economy than electricity and power, water and waste management, and agriculture as well as providing significant societal benefits and progression opportunities, they might be more attracted to the roles.
So, whether we focus on the financial contribution to our economy, or the everyday difference for our community, we must keep shouting about the difference social care makes, the improvements it brings to people’s lives, the rewarding career it offers to skilled professionals, and the opportunities available.
