How your data is helping to shape social care policy

Mark Moulding, Head of External Affairs and Policy, discusses how data shared via Skills for Care’s Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) is helping to influence decision-making for the social care sector.

There are now more than 21,000 care organisations using the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) to store and share their workforce data.

By using ASC-WDS, these care providers are helping to influence real change for the people who work in social care and the people who draw on care and support.

ASC-WDS is a free online data collection service where employers can safely store their staff records, manage staff training and monitor factors such as turnover and vacancy rates to help with business planning. Employers can also benchmark their workforce metrics against other similar providers. Additionally, having an ASC-WDS account provides access to the Learning and Development Support Scheme (LDSS), which provides funding for staff training and development.

Beyond these immediate benefits for employers, using ASC-WDS also provides you with a unique opportunity to increase understanding of the social care sector and inform policymaking.

Skills for Care uses the data shared in ASC-WDS to create workforce insights and reports about the social care sector, including our annual ‘State of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ report, which provides a comprehensive look into the current social care workforce landscape - including issues such as pay, training, qualifications, workforce demographics and recruitment and retention of staff. The latest version of the report will be published on 15 October 2025.

This report - and Skills for Care’s other workforce insights - are used by policymakers including the Government, local authorities, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and more to increase their knowledge of what’s happening in social care right now and make decisions to help best support the sector.

In my role at Skills for Care it’s really exciting to see first-hand how these insights are being used by the Government and others in policymaking, and there have been some really notable examples of that recently.

Last week, DHSC published an open consultation that aims to gather views from the sector on how to establish the best way to collectively agree a Fair Pay Agreement.

This is a really important step forward in looking at pay and terms and conditions for people working in social care, to ensure people are being suitably compensated for the valuable work they do.

Skills for Care’s data has been quoted within the consultation document to give a picture of how pay impacts on staff turnover, as well as giving clearer insight into social care workforce demographics and the size of the social care sector as an employer in England.

The insights provided by Skills for Care are also often cited by ministers in answers to parliamentary questions, and in House of Commons discussions. In a recent discussion around the turnover of care workers, Stephen Kinnock, Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care, used our data to evidence how the social care sector is growing.

Our data has also been used in numerous significant reports for the sector including the Health and Social Care Select Committee report on the cost of inaction on adult social care reform and the Fabian Society roadmap to a National Care Service.

The House of Commons research library is used by MPs to read up on issues including social care, and our data has been used in research briefings including a recent one on the adult social care workforce in England.

Perhaps one of the most significant uses of our data in recent years was in the People at the Heart of Care white paper, which was the previous government's social care reform agenda. Our data was used in the white paper to showcase the importance of social care and evidence what changes were required to make social care better for all.

When we see our insights – created by the data that you share – being used in this way, it really drives home that data is about so much more than numbers on a sheet. It’s about knowledge, power and change.

If you’re not already using ASC-WDS and want to join the 21,000+ organisations who are contributing to these important insights about social care, find out more about how to sign-up for free on our ASC-WDS webpage.

Discover more about how #DataDrivesChange with our spotlight.

Print this page