Recruiting and retaining staff remains a problem for many adult social care employers, which is why the new Finding and keeping workers resource has been created to help them tackle these challenges.

 

Hosted on the Skills for Care website the resource identifies problems and solutions within four key themes to attract more people, take on the right people, foster talent and increase skills and keep your colleagues.

 

All the materials are held in a central, easy to use resources library which can be searched to find information that is relevant to your organisation. Employers will be encouraged to help grow this library with new resources and good practice examples.

 

Skills for Care CEO Sharon Allen said: “With up to 60,000 vacancies on any given day in our sector it is clear finding and keeping quality people is a real problem which this resource will help employers to tackle.

 

“It was created through a genuine partnership between Skills for Care, the Department of Health’s Recruitment and retention group and employers of all sizes from across the sector. This is a resource based firmly on real life experiences that I know will make a real difference to a problem that impacts on every adult social care employer in England.”

 

This is also the main resource to support the implementation of the Adult social care workforce recruitment and retention strategy 2014-2017 prepared by Skills for Care on behalf of the Department of Health’s recruitment and retention group.

 

Recruitment and retention group chair Sheila Scott said: “The Department of Health Recruitment and retention group committed to explore the development of Finding and keeping workers as part of the adult social care workforce recruitment and retention strategy 2014-2017 and we are very excited that it has come to fruition in the form of this new online resource.

 

There is no doubt that the sector produces a vast amount of resources to support recruitment and retention initiatives. However, employers tend to agree that what they really need is a simplified route to make sense of this information which will support their very unique recruitment and retention challenges.  We believe that this new online resource, based on examples of what works well for employers, will do just that.

 

“There is so much good practice out there and, over the coming year, we will continue to seek this out and add to our best practice case studies and library of resources.  We will also ensure that we continue to listen to employers to find out how Finding and keeping workers can continue to support emerging challenges. This is just the starting point and I look forward to watching it develop as more resources are added.”

 

To access the resource go to www.skillsforcare.org.uk/findingandkeepingworkers

 

 

Paul Clarke: 0113 2411297/ 07977519287.  [email protected]

 

• Skills for Care is the employer-led strategic body for workforce development in adult social care in England, which is licensed jointly with its UK allies by UKCES to be the ‘Skills for Care and Development’ Sector Skills Council (SSC). Both organisations are chaired by Professor David Croisdale-Appleby. The other members of the SSC are the Scottish Social Services Council, the Care Council for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Social Care Council.

• Skills for Care forms a strategic overview of workforce needs in adult social care, which accounts for around 1.5 million workers, spread over around 39,000 establishments employing care staff. Skills for Care members are drawn from groups representing public, private and voluntary sector care employers, along with representatives of staff, trainers, service users and informal carers. Social care includes residential care, domiciliary care and social work with all its specialisms.

• Skills for Care and its SSC allies promote and develop the social care sector’s National Occupational Standards which are statements of competence that describe ‘best practice’.

• Skills for Care area networks are major brokers of funding for social care workforce development.