Sarah Gilbert, Head of Workforce Strategy, Implementation Unit at Skills for Care, discusses the importance of training our workforce for a digital future and recent developments in the space.
Embracing technology is vital to the success of our sector. According to our most recent ASC-WDS datai, the requirement for care services is due to grow substantially in coming years. By 2040 the sector may need 540,000 extra new posts, which is around 29% growth. Accommodating this increased demand will require a care sector that is confident and comfortable using digital tools to make care more efficient while maintaining the highest standards of personalised support.
Thankfully, the sector taking positive steps towards adopting newer digital ways of working. 76% of the Care Quality Commission (CQC), registered care employers have already moved from paper-based records to digital social care records and new, innovative tech-based approaches to care are being developed and adopted on a regular basis.
That being said, the sector is far from being fully onboard with digital. The Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Careii, which launched in July 2024, offered some important insight on this topic. It pointed towards a 2021 review, funded and delivered as part of the ‘People at the Heart of Care’ white paper, which found basic digital skill gaps in the social care workforce.
Slow adoption of technology undermines the efficiency of care delivery and may also cost our sector money. Our analysis showed that investment in digital interventions has the potential to return significant sums to care providers, with each £1 spent on assistive technology, care management technology and digital social care records returning £4.21, £1.20 and £6.77 respectively.
So, what’s being done to prepare the sector for an increasingly digital future? One recent development is the launch of the National Care Forum’s care technologist job role pilot. The new role, which was a recommendation of the Workforce Strategy, is focused on deploying technology in care environments and helping to create digital care plans.
At Skills for Care, we’ve also made a variety of resources available to help providers develop their digital skills. Our Digital Skills eLearningiii resource is a series of free eLearning modules, funded by the NHS Transformation Directorate, designed to help learners develop comprehensive digital skills for adult social care, aligned with the Digital Skills Framework. We also have a variety of tech-focused webinarsiv, including our Digitising Social Care webinar, available on our website.
NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) manage the Digitising Social Care websitev, which provides guidance to support digital innovation in adult social care. This website offers clear, up-to-date advice to help care providers enhance care quality and safety through digital transformation.
The Digital Skills Frameworkvi was developed as part of the Digitising Social Care programme and is a free resource intended to help staff and employers understand essential digital skills. It includes guidance, tools and resources to help care providers identify digital training needs and plan for improvement. This is a great starting point for providers who are unsure where they need to start in the digital skills journey.
The Digital Care Hub offers free information, guidance, and support to help adult social care providers effectively and safely utilise digital technology. As an independent, care provider-led consortium, it collaborates with various stakeholders, including technology suppliers, people drawing on care and support, carers, commissioners, and regulators, to address the sector’s diverse needs.
Although social care been slower to adopt digital ways of working when compared to other sectors, I think it’s important to recognise the efforts that are underway to change this. There’s been a really strong response in recent years to our need for more digital skills, with a huge variety of resources being made available to the sector. The launch of a unified vision for the future in the form of the Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care makes increasingly confident that we’re closer than ever to seeing some big jumps in the digital confidence of our workforce.
