Skills For Care Is Supporting Social Care Employers To #Recruitright

Skills for Care is supporting social care teams to #RecruitRight with its latest campaign.

The campaign comes as their latest data released in July shows that vacancy rates across adult social care in England have decreased on last year, but do still remain high.

The current vacancy rate is around 9.9% – or around 152,000 on any given day. The number of vacant posts has decreased by 11,000 posts since last year, when vacancies increased for the first time on record.

This campaign highlights that while it’s positive to see vacancy rates reducing, social care employers are still facing recruitment and retention challenges.

Running through September, the #RecruitRight campaign will provide information and resources looking at how to diversify recruitment approaches, how to use values-based recruitment and how to ensure all recruitment is conducted safely, fairly and ethically, including international recruitment.

The campaign will include blogs and real life insights from recruitment experts and social care organisations who have an effective approach to their recruitment and retention strategy.

The campaign will run across Skills for Care website, social media, and other communications channels.

As part of the campaign, Care Friends Founder and author of ‘Saving social care’, Neil Eastwood, will be taking part in a live episode of Skills for Care’s ‘The care exchange’ podcast on 28 September.

Tristram Gardner, Deputy CEO, Skills for Care says: While it’s positive that our latest data shows vacancy rates have fallen, we know from our discussions with employers that recruitment and retention remains a key challenge.

It’s vital that we’re able to find and keep the right people to work in social care. Our campaign aims to support social care employers in taking different approaches to recruitment and utilising resources that can support them.

Our data also shows that there’s been a notable increase in the number of people recruited from abroad into direct care roles. While international recruitment can be one solution to recruitment challenges, it’s vital that this is done in an ethical way. This campaign will highlight the support available for employers when recruiting internationally to ensure this is the case.

You can follow the campaign and join in on discussions on social media using #RecruitRight.