Social care: Workforce plan will tackle problems behind persistently high vacancy rates

Health leaders have said that adequate funding must be made available for a long term workforce strategy that is being developed to tackle huge recruitment and retention challenges for adult social care in England.

Skills for Care, the sector’s strategic planning body, announced that it would start investigating a strategy for England as it published its annual report on the state of social care.1

The report revealed that 440 000 new posts may be needed by 2035 because the projected number of people aged 65 and over could hit 13.8m (compared with 10.5m in 2020). It highlighted a range of concerns, including low pay and insecure contracts, that were contributing to high staff losses and turnover.

While latest figures reveal some “green shoots”—the adult social care workforce grew by 1% in 2022-23 and vacancy …