The ‘State of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ report for 2021/22 was released in October. Skills for Care looks at what the data tells us about the profile of the sector and its impact on our society.
There are 1.5 million people working in adult social care in England. These people work across 17,900 different organisations which between them have 39,000 different establishments. There’s also an estimated 65,000 individual employers directly employing their own staff.
Social care has a bigger workforce than the NHS, construction, transport, or food and drink service industries.
The sector also brings a significant economic impact, contributing an estimated £51.5 billion gross value added (GVA) per annum to the economy. This calculation is based on factors including wages that staff in the sector get paid; increased household income due to employment in the sector that is re-spent in other parts of the economy, and the supply chain that exists because of the sector.
While these are all sizeable numbers, the data is about more than just numbers; it’s really about the people who make up those numbers and recognising the important impact those people have on our communities and the lives of so many people who draw on care and support.
Our forecasts show that if the number of adult social care posts grows proportionally to the number of people aged 65 and over in the population, 480,000 extra posts would be required by 2035 to keep pace with demand.
The data highlights that while care worker is the most common job role in the adult social care sector, with an estimated 860,000 roles being carried out in 2021/22, there’s also a variety of other opportunities available to work in care. The second most common job role is working for direct payment recipients (for example as a personal assistant) at 120,000 roles, followed by ancillary posts (such as catering, cleaning and maintenance) accounting for 77,000 filled roles.
Registered managers account for 23,500 filled roles, the same as social workers, while registered nurses make up 32,000 roles. Occupational therapists also account for 20,000 filled roles.
Looking at specialist needs, there are 870,000 filled roles specialising in dementia care; 711,000 roles focused on autism and learning disabilities, and 598,000 roles focused on mental health needs.
Data also highlight the skills and experience of the workforce, finding that the majority of people working in social care have three to nine years’ experience of working in care, while 35% have been working in the sector for 10 years or more. Registered managers have an average of 19 years in the sector and 8.5 years in their current role.
44% of people working in adult social care hold a relevant social care qualification at level 2 or above. The most popular non-mandatory training is recorded as being around dementia.
We know investing in learning and development reduces the average turnover rate for care workers. It was 31.7% amongst those that received some form of training compared to 41.2% amongst those that hadn’t. We also know that continued investment in staff training further reduces average turnover amongst care workers. Turnover was reduced by 9.1% for care workers who received more than 30 instances of training when compared to care workers with one instance of training. Our data clearly show investing in workforce learning and development works.
Establishments with higher levels of staff undertaking learning and development were also more likely to receive higher CQC scores
Social care offers career pathways to build a lifelong career. For ancillary staff, the most common career pathway was to progress to care worker, and then to senior care worker, or supervisory roles. Senior care workers or supervisors were most likely to move into first-line managerial or registered manager roles. Regulated professional workers can progress up the pay scale within their individual roles and were also observed to move into managerial posts. Registered nurses generally progressed to registered manager roles, whilst social workers and occupational therapists moved into management roles within their local authority.
With such a large workforce there are so many exciting career opportunities for people with the right skills and values to support people directly, specialise in certain areas of care provision, or progress into management roles.
View the ‘State of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ report for more insights.
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