The social care minister Alison McGovern said this week it is time to get “stuck in” on sorting out the social care workforce, via a much-trailed workforce action plan. It’s the second time since her appointment in early August that she has made headlines with comments about needing to sort the social care workforce, after she called it “unacceptably underappreciated” last month.
Her comments (in reaction to the latest Skills for Care workforce analysis – more of which later) have added to the positive signals from government on the issue since her boss Andy Burnham said he would introduce the plan alongside the ‘fair pay agreement’ (FPA) process in his second week in office in July. Since then, Mr Burnham has repeatedly promised to publish a plan, as has his health secretary Yvette Cooper.
We have been left in no doubt they want it sorted. The question is: when?
The FPA is scheduled to be negotiated during the course of next year, with the first legally binding pay levels set to come into effect two years from now in autumn 2028.
Given that’s likely to be an all-consuming process for both sector leaders and civil servants, there’s unlikely to be a huge amount of time to come up with a plan that will simultaneously fix the other problems that mean care operators struggle to attract and retain good staff, especially young people.
Ageing workforce
Skills for Care said this week a further 410,000 posts would need to be filled by 2040 to meet rising demand, and chief executive Professor Oonagh Smyth said more men and young people in the UK need to be persuaded to work in the sector in particular, as set out in its Social Care Workforce strategy, published over two years ago.
The average age of workers in residential and care and nursing homes is 43, and more than a quarter (26 per cent) of the workforce were aged over 55 according to the organisation’s latest data analysis covering 2025-26.
Given that many of the recommendations in the workforce strategy appear overdue (including a jointly backed 10-year attraction plan for those groups plus people with technical skills by the Departments of Health and Social Care and Work and Pensions, which was due over a year ago) – the Burnham government does not, unfortunately, have the luxury of time to spend on yet more words and plans that kick the can further down the road.
Skills for Care costed its plan based on previously set budgets for social care reform. Sector leaders will be hoping the wait is now down to money, and the budget due in less than two weeks will unlock fresh cash and immediate actions attached to prove that the Prime Minister can ensure the care workforce really is no longer an invisible, unappreciated backbone on which we all rely but frequently fail to support.
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