Skills for Care launches the State of the Adult Social Care Workforce report

News release 12 July 2010

Skills for Care has launched the second State of the Adult Social Care Workforce report packed with the latest data helping 17,300 organisations make sense of a complex sector providing social care for adults and older people in England.

The report found that the size of the adult social care sector continues to increase as the estimated number of paid jobs across the sector rose to 1.71 million carried out by 1.6 million paid staff.

The new report based on improved data from Skills for Care's National Minimum Data Set for Social Care (NMDS-SC) and national statistics from the Office of National Statistics covers key areas including a gender profile confirming that about 80% of all jobs in adult social care are done by women as well as the age of workers in the sector and pay levels.

Skills for Care's NMDS-SC reveals that 64% of all senior care workers hold care-related qualifications up to NVQ Level 2 or above, at least 39% are qualified up to Level 3 or above and 62% of Registered Managers are qualified to level 4 or above.

The report also supplies invaluable data for employers about vacancy and turnover rates as well as well as looking at skills shortages and gaps across the sector.

The report's authors have looked at four hypothetical models examining the potential size of the workforce in 2025 which are designed to add to the debate about how the sector will recruit and retain the future workforce as the demographic profile of the population undergoes dramatic changes.

"The adult social care sector was once famously described as a 'data desert' so Skills for Care believes this new report will provide an oasis of information making sure we have reliable data to create a trained and qualified workforce capable of meeting the huge challenges ahead," says Skills for Care Chair Professor David Croisdale-Appleby.

"We can see there has been a significant increase in the number of service providers and employees and given this trend is going to continue we now have a report that will help us make long term workforce planning decisions based on robust data rather than anecdotal evidence."

For the executive summary and full report visit
Annual Reports on the Social Care Workforce

Media enquiries:

Paul Clarke: 0113 2411297/ 07977519287. paul.clarke@skillsforcare.org.uk

Notes to editors:

1. Skills for Care is the employment-led strategic body for workforce development in adult social care in England, which is licensed jointly with its UK allies by UKCES to be the 'Skills for Care and Development' Sector Skills Council (SSC). Both organisations are chaired by Professor David Croisdale-Appleby. The other members of the SSC are the Children's Workforce Development Council (also for England), the General Social Care Council, the Scottish Social Services Council, the Care Council for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Social Care Council.
2. Skills for Care forms a strategic overview of workforce needs in adult social care, which accounts for nearly 1.6 million workers or 5 per cent of England's workforce, spread over 40,600 establishments employing care staff. Skills for Care members are drawn from groups representing public, private and voluntary sector care employers, along with representatives of staff, trainers, service users and informal carers. Social care includes residential care, domiciliary care and social work with all its specialisms.
3. Skills for Care and its SSC allies promote and develop the social care sector's National Occupational Standards which are statements of competence that describe 'best practice'.
4. Skills for Care regional committees are major brokers of funding for social care workforce development.