New Report Published on the Adult Social Care Workforce

Thursday 03 April 2008Comment on this article Permlink

New Report Published on the Adult Social Care Workforce

The State of the Adult Social Care Workforce in England, 2008 has recently been published by Skills for Care’s Skills Research and Intelligence Unit (February 2008).

In 2006-7 there were an estimated 13,500 organisations in England providing or organising social care for adults and older people and employing social care workers.

These range from the largest – the NHS, large charities, councils with adult social services responsibilities – to the smallest care home.

The number of establishments (i.e. local units of employment) employing social care staff and/or providing or organising adult social care in 2006-7 is estimated at around 35,000.

This included:

Most of social care service is provided by micro and small enterprises.

Of the 35,000 establishments (local units), an estimated 20,200 (58%) are micro establishments with 1-10 employees, 10,200 (29%) are small with 11-49 employees, 4,300 (12%) medium with 50-99 employees and only around 300 (1%) large with 200 or more employees.

Of the 14,456 care-only homes registered with CSCI at June 2007, 9,870 (68%) are private sector, 3,251 voluntary sector and most of the rest operated by councils.

Care homes with nursing are more private sector-dominated: of the total 4,057, 3,616 (89%) are private sector and only 405 voluntary.

At that date, the average care-only home had 18.1 places and the average care home with nursing 44.1 places.

Consequently over three-quarters (344,426, 78%) of the total 440,780 places in care homes are in the hands of the private sector.

Between 2004 and mid-2007 the number of care-only homes fell from 15,372 to 14,456, and total places from 270,675 to 261,861, although private sector places increased due to larger homes being created.

The number of care homes with nursing also fell, from 4,130 to 4,057, but the number of places increased from 175,057 to 179,019, also due to larger private sector homes.

Care homes continue to be dominated by small businesses.

Major companies’ shares of care homes are increasing slowly, but in 2007 only an estimated 22% of private care-only homes and just over 50% of private care homes with nursing were operated by large companies (UK-wide figures).

At 31 March 2007 a total of 54,151 individuals were receiving direct payments to fund their own care.

Of these, 47,088 were in adults and older people categories.

The majority were adults with physical disabilities (16,140) and older people (13,184). The number of recipients of direct payments is increasing rapidly, and numbers of older people look set to overtake those of physically disabled adult recipients during 2007-8.

At least 145,000 older people in England are estimated to have been funding their own personal care in 2006.

An estimated 1.39 million people were in paid employment in adult social care in England in 2006-7.

Of these, 1.31 million were directly employed at the place of work, and 78,000 were bank, pool and agency staff plus small numbers of students and others.

This estimate is considerably higher than the 922,000 ‘core workforce’ in our previous report.

This is due to improved data on the independent sector from the NMDS-SC, and the inclusion of over 100,000 staff employed by recipients of direct payments.

The 1.31 million directly-employed consists of 764,000 care workers, 141,000 other direct care- and support-providing workers, 131,000 managers and supervisors, 90,000 professional staff (including nurses, social workers, occupational therapists) and 184,000 administrative, ancillary and other workers.

The independent sector (i.e. private + voluntary) was employing 921,000 (70%) of this workforce.

Councils were employing 217,000, the NHS an estimated 60,000 and recipients of direct payments 113,000.

At this stage it has not been possible to make separate estimates of the private and voluntary sector workforces, but this should be possible during 2008 with larger NMDS-SC datasets.

In 2006-7 584,000 were directly employed in independent sector residential care, 274,000 in domiciliary care and smaller numbers in community services (34,000) and day care (29,000).

Most of these were in direct care-providing roles: there were 569,000 care workers and 75,000 in other direct care/support providing roles, plus 94,000 managers and supervisors, 52,000 professional staff (mainly nurses) and 131,000 administrative, ancillary and other workers.

In addition the independent sector had 67,000 workers not directly employed, including 33,000 bank and pool staff, 10,000.

Information on training and qualification levels in the workforce is still fragmented. NMDS-SC data is incomplete because many employers who have completed returns so far have not reported the qualifications their workers have. This should improve in future.

By the end of 2006 13,920 Registered Manager’s (Adults), 55,413 Care or Health & Social Care NVQ Level 2, 23,499 Care or Health & Social Care NVQ Level 3 and 4,293 Care or Health & Social Care NVQ Level 4 certificates had been awarded in England.

Available NMDS-SC data suggest that the National Minimum Standards for care workers are still some way off being achieved.

This is corroborated by CSCI data showing that by end March 2007 between a fifth and a quarter of registered providers had not met the qualifications standard.

At September 2006 most council-employed Registered Managers either held or were working towards a relevant Level 4 qualification.

The NMDS-SC suggests a similar picture in the independent sector.

Between 1 April 2006 and 31 March 2007 5,470 students registered on social work degree courses in England.

This is slightly less than the 5,553 in the previous 12-month period. In the same 2006-7 period 2,915 students gained social work degrees.

This relatively low figure is the 2003 changeover from DipSW to degree feeding through.

The 2007-8 figure will reflect the 4,770 students who registered on degree course in 2004-5. In 2006-7 there was a fall in council spending on secondments and bursaries for social work students.

This may be partly due to the DipSW/degree changeover.

Download the report.

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