Why 2025 Must Be a Year for Care
By Dr Angela Brown, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Training in Care (www.trainingincare.co.uk)
It doesn’t take a government report to confirm what everybody in adult social care already knows and can evidence.
While a commission for strategic long-term change is welcome, there are also several quick and easy changes which the government could swiftly implement to significantly improve the sector in the short-term.
A start would be to focus recruitment on the individual progression plan of the care worker. Afterall, surely a sector which traditionally has poor pay and responds to ever changing societal needs, deserves some control over what are perceived are important skills.
The sector still relies on recruitment via word of mouth and offers low pay and low recognition of the skills required in adult care as an incentive. While the workforce needs to respond to the needs of employers, we have a duty to understand the needs of the carer by providing progression of their own career pathway.
The early years sector faced a similar challenge with public perception. Since no one needs a qualification to have a child, it was perceived by many – and even some in government – that the skills required to work in the sector simply came natural.
Although the early years sector has not yet chased all of its demons, public perception of the skills required undertook a change and – largely helped by the excellent Sure Start system – parents began to understand the value of having a skilled workforce to look after our children. It seems an alien concept to us now, but it is very much where we’re at with care, and it doesn’t need to be that way.
In care today, we’re constantly seeing headlines of endemic staff shortages and staff burnout, but this could be significantly improved if the expectations of the sector are proactive rather than responsive.
This is what the Commission may conclude, but in the short-term, we need to invest in the current army of the workforce whose goodwill and compassion is relied upon to respond out of decency rather than an identified societal need.
Demands on the NHS can also only be supported by an adult care sector which is respected for the skills they possess.
For 2025 to herald in some immediate change, let’s utilise Government skills funding and Department of Social Care workforce development programmes to really drive the sector forward.
Let’s find out what the people receiving care really want from their care plan and let them have a say in what the devolved authorities are spending on.
Let’s be ambitious and listen to the sector, use its expertise and plan for a service which not only works well in conjunction with the NHS, but one which is respected and rewarded.
Let’s make 2025 the year we start seeing real change in the care sector.