Alex O’Neill, Operations Manager at Fairway Healthcare, discusses how we can make social care a career of choice amid the current staffing crisis.
Our sector is in a staffing crisis, there’s no debate about it, but what there is, is debate about how can we encourage new people into our industry and for the current carers to remain in the workforce. In my opinion, the answer is simple, we invest in them.
While many will just assume this is a money issue, it’s not, it’s about investing in carers and their personal development. It’s about allowing them to learn new skills, grow as a professional and supporting them in their aspirations.
According to a report published in October 2023 by Skills for Care, the leading source of workforce intelligence for adult social care in England, 50% of carers in England had no relevant social care qualification. Half of the workforce is unqualified and that is unacceptable.
There are many carers in this sector that have had basic training, the bare minimum, leading them or others to believe that this job is ‘easy’ or ‘simple’. However, I think we can all agree that caring for someone who is in a vulnerable position is not easy, it is in fact exceedingly difficult, and with a lot of responsibility. There is a myriad of skills and characteristics needed for a carer, and by completing a structured training programme, they can learn those practical and theoretical skills in a tried and tested environment, whilst also developing their soft skills, communication and empathy.
We need to keep the talent that we have in our industry and not lose it to other industries. There are thousands of incredible carers in our sector, but they can become even better if they are invested in and developed as it will give them renewed enthusiasm for their job.
The main concerns I have with our industry at the minute are two-fold: the lack of genuine quality, recognised training available for people wanting to become carers, and the amount that care managers rely on emergency agency staff.
I’ll address the training aspect first.
I work with Embark Learning Care Academy, a widely recognised training provider in the West Midlands that offers more than 100 different courses for healthcare. Its pioneering programme, Step Into Care, is one of the most popular courses Embark offers, and is a four week accredited, pre-employability programme, which is completely free of charge, and will help new carers achieve a variety of courses and qualifications to make them fully compliant to work under CQC Regulations.
As for the career opportunities after becoming a qualified carer, for years Embark has partnered with Fairway Healthcare, which will place the new care professional into health and social care career opportunities. The newly qualified carers and support workers will have a guaranteed interview with Fairway, which will then place them into a number of different care environments, whether that’s working in one of the many residential or nursing homes in the West Midlands, young adult or mental health locations or domiciliary care roles.
These two companies are perfectly in sync in this work together, because if there’s a shortage of carers, Embark can train people willing to learn, and as for the fact that apparently there are no jobs for those carers, Fairway has that aspect covered. So why is the industry not adopting this tried and tested method for its staffing issues?
I believe the easy answer is that it’s not what the industry is used to. For decades it has been the norm for care managers to reactively fill their staff rota instead of proactively ensuring they have the correct staff, who are trained to a high standard, in their homes.
Fairway works with hundreds of care settings across the West Midlands and once we explain that we can actually save them money by allowing them to employ staff that can begin at their care homes on a temporary or permanent contract, instead of having to spend more because they’re rushing to fill their staffing needs, they use us for their carers every time.
More than 90% of our workforce is formally qualified. At the time of writing, we have 165 care professionals currently on their level two or level three diploma journey, with plans for more than 1,000 new social care professionals in the 2024-2025 academic year.
The need to use projects and partnerships like ours to reduce agency spend dramatically, whilst improving the quality and retention of care teams, is a great solution to a long term issue.
The impending threats to our sector continue, there are 165,000 vacancies now, with a predicted 550,000 vacancies to fill in 10 years. There is a desperate need for a focus on retention and a sustained motivated workforce. We need proper long term investment in training and career development, which will benefit the industry as a whole with a well-educated, valued workforce.
We need to recruit, retain and sustain as the message of our sector.
fairwayhomecare.co.uk
