Taking care of the UK’s population as its needs change with age is a crucially important role for the adult social care sector. Yet there is a universal misunderstanding about the industry, leading to very real concerns over safeguarding the workforce of the future as young people look elsewhere to start – and further – their careers. This situation is further bolstered when looking at the need for specialist care. As awareness and diagnosis techniques mature, the number of dementia cases in England rose to 487,432 in June 2024 – one of the highest diagnosis rates in the world.
Last year, Skills for Care launched its Workforce Strategy, developed alongside stakeholders in the industry to present a 15-year plan on how we can ensure we have enough of the right people with the right skills to provide the best possible care and support for the people who draw on it. The need to train was identified as just one of its core themes, alongside ‘attract and retain’ and ‘transform’ but, by placing a focus on this element of training and upskilling, it could underpin a lot of the strategies identified in the rest of the plan, helping to make it a success.
Long-term opportunities to motivate long-lasting careers
Alongside care workers, it is reassuring to see the strategy places a strong focus on registered professionals – such as nurses – as well as development opportunities that could lead to more managers. Skills for Care’s latest workforce report found that these roles were only accounted for by 5% and 7% of the entire sector workforce respectively. The key to everything here lies in retention, backed up by data.
On average, registered managers have 8.7 years of experience in their role, compared to 4.9 years for every other job, showing the need to encourage more people to stay for the long term – yet also presenting the very real opportunity for professional development for those who do. With the World Economic Forum reporting that one in five young people are not in work, education or training, this could be a good motivator to attract more talent if we as a sector work to ensure these viable, long-term career choices are easily accessible.
Of course, another element affecting the attractiveness of adult social care work is the essential need for it to be done ‘in person’. Research from Nationwide and Ipsos found that 62% of Gen Z and 56% of Millennials interviewed wanted to work from home at least three days a week post-pandemic – and while our place of work might not be a typical office, working from home simply is not possible in care. However, with young people also placing finding meaningful work as a top priority for them, there is an opportunity to capture this motivation and lead to great careers, with the right tools in place.
Developing the managers of tomorrow
Managers have a very important role in a care home, working alongside the leadership team to ensure that their values are put into practice, staff are given opportunities and great standards of care are upheld. Yet Skills for Care data from 2024 found that more than 30% of people working as registered managers are 55 years old or over, meaning they will reach retirement age in the next 15 years. For these roles, nurturing from within is key and something we are investing a lot of time and effort in at Church Farm Care.
One way is through our culture. Our Head of Operations, Nike, strongly believes in highlighting the clear pathways that are available in our sector and encouraging people to seek out education. We will support people with this – as well as identifying any opportunities to help them develop their skills further. Even though we do not expect every care worker starting out with us to have a formal qualification, we love to enroll staff onto diploma courses and start their journey and commitment to the sector.
This is bolstered by our training, led by our Head of Learning and Development, Liz, which encourages people to become ‘champions’ within the company. If people express an interest in becoming trained to a higher level in a certain element such as first aid or infection control, for example, they can then share that knowledge within the team and start to gain those leadership skills that give them ownership over their role and empower them to progress. With Skills for Care data showing that turnover rate reduces by almost 10% when training and development opportunities are available, and the average manager having nearly nine years of experience, getting the basics right and then seeking out opportunities to expand on training could help hugely in developing the managers of tomorrow.
Creating a clinical community
As a specialist care provider covering dementia care as well as palliative and bariatric care, we understand how essential the role of a registered nurse is to a successful care home. In fact, many of our managers and deputy managers worked as trained nurses before moving into their current roles, and we have nearly 50 nurses who work in our homes, with two on duty per home every day. In this high-stakes clinical position, formal training is essential and this can create some barriers to ambitious, talented people who do not have the resources to start, or then to continue, once qualified. To support our nurses – who are so valuable to us – we ensure they have access to relevant CPD opportunities and we pay for them to stay on the register every year, understanding the benefit this investment can bring.
To support this formal side of training, we also believe that our policy to schedule two nurses together on shift is another core way to strengthen the holistic development and wellbeing of our team. Our Head of Learning and Development, Liz, is a registered nurse herself and she often shares the positive feedback from nurses, especially those who are newly qualified. She says this gives them someone to bounce ideas off and allows them to learn through observation and share in their experiences, which can help with their own wellbeing. After spending three years training to become a nurse, working alone in your first role after studying can be a very daunting experience – simply offering that companionship and opportunities for support could mean the difference between a role that is attractive and one that is always left empty.
Training has the power to attract new talent, pave the way for high-quality specialist care and nurture the teams of tomorrow, but it needs to be done in the right way and in a strong, supportive environment to reap the benefits it could bring. In turn, alongside other fundamentals such as offering good salary opportunities, this can help people feel safe in their role and have optimism in the future. With such a long-term view highlighted by Skills for Care in its Workforce Strategy, there is time to get there – and by investing in training in meaningful ways, we could fully boost its chances of success.
How will your organisation utilise training to strengthen and safeguard its workforce for the future? Leave a comment on this feature or join the conversation to share your thoughts.
Patrick Atkinson is Director at Church Farm Care. Email: [email protected] Linkedin @Church-Farm-Care