Nearly 400,000 adult social care workers left their jobs last year

The workforce development body for adult social care in England has described the sector as a “leaky bucket that we urgently need to repair”, after new data revealed that 390,000 care workers left their jobs this year.

While the majority of adult social care workers took up other posts in the sector, one third left altogether, prompting calls for a renewed set of plans to retain the workforce.

Workforce grew by 1% last year but vacancies still persist

The annual State of the Adult Social Care Sector and Workforce in England report covers the year from April 2022 to March 2023.

Published by Skills for Care, the report highlights some improvements in workforce capacity, with the workforce growing 1% over the past year, after shrinking for the first time ever the previous year.

This has largely been driven by an increase in international recruitment, which has led to more posts being filled, less turnover, and fewer vacancies (9.9% down from 10.6%).

However, there are still around 152,000 vacancies in adult social care, and hundreds of thousands of care workers are leaving their jobs to find work elsewhere.

This may be partly down to poor pay arrangements for care workers, as the analysis found that, on average, care workers with five years’ (or more) experience in the sector were paid just six pence (0.6%) more per hour than care workers with less than one year of experience.

There is now concern that if these trends, continue there won’t be enough staff to support our ageing population, with projections showing that we’ll need 25% more posts (440,000) by 2035 if the number of adult social care posts grows proportionally to the projected number of people aged 65 and over in the population.

Skills for Care to develop a 15-year strategy for the social care workforce

In light of these findings, Skills for Care has announced it will be working with a wide range of organisations and people who have a stake in social care, to develop a workforce strategy.

The strategy will identify the social care workforce needed over the next 15 years and set out a plan for ensuring the sector has enough of the right people with the right skills.

It will help employers and commissioners with workforce planning, support the government’s reform agenda and complement the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan covering the same period, which was published earlier this year.

The strategy will particularly focus on retaining staff, and the report highlights five key factors which have been shown to keep care workers in their jobs. These are:

• being paid more than the minimum wage
• not being on a zero-hours contract
• being able to work full-time
• being able to access training
• having a relevant qualification.

Where none of these factors apply, care workers are more than twice as likely to leave their jobs compared to when all five factors apply.

Progress has been made but challenges ‘haven’t gone away’

Skills for Care CEO, Oonagh Smyth, says that while it’s good to see “green shoots” for the sector, it is important to remember that “the challenges haven’t gone away.”

“In particular, the fact that 390,000 people left their jobs in 2022/23 and around a third of them left the sector altogether shows that we have a leaky bucket that we urgently need to repair.

“We can’t simply recruit our way out of our retention challenges. So, we need a comprehensive workforce strategy to ensure we can both attract and keep enough people with the right skills to support everyone who draws on care and support – and all of us who will draw on care and support in the future.”

Smyth says the team at Skills for Care will use the expertise, data, insights and relationships they have developed over the last 20 years to develop the strategy, and will work with a wide range of partners who are willing to “embrace and drive the changes we need.”

“As always, we are grateful to all the employers who contribute their data to give us a very clear picture of what is happening in our sector, and what needs to happen to fully meet the needs of people who draw on care and support in our communities,” she said.