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Oonagh Smyth

Chief Executive, Skills for Care


Oonagh Smyth is CEO of Skills for Care. For seven years she was Executive Director of Strategy and Influence at Mencap leading a directorate of around 500 people across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Oonagh has held roles at the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action and the Northern Ireland Equality Commission, senior roles in Westminster Equalities Partnership and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. She is a former Co-Chair of the Care and Support Alliance, which is a cross-sector alliance of 80 social care organisations influencing at the highest government levels.

Blogs and articles written by Oonagh Smyth

Next steps for the Care workforce pathway for adult social care

26 Jun 2023

As the call for evidence for the new care workforce pathway closes, Oonagh Smyth, CEO, Skills for Care and Anna Boaden, Deputy Director Department of …read more

Learning and development

Retention

Recruitment

Skills for Care

Workforce development

What integration means for social care

25 May 2023

In this joint blog from Skills for Care CEO Oonagh Smyth and Director of System and Social Partnership at NHS Employers Rebecca Smith, they discuss wh…read more

Integration

Policy

Why we’re #CelebratingSocialCare this April

03 Apr 2023

As we launch our #CelebratingSocialCare spotlight, our CEO Oonagh Smyth shares why it’s so important for us to celebrate social care and why we’d love…read more

Skills for Care

Reflections and lessons on workforce capacity in adult social care

19 Dec 2022

Our CEO Oonagh Smyth recently attended the Leading Age conference in Denver. She reflects on key takeaways from the event. read more

Leadership

Learning and development

Recruitment

Retention

Update - Our pledge supporting full and equal contribution at events from people who draw on social care

26 Jul 2022

Our CEO Oonagh Smyth looks at what we have been doing to make good on our pledge to ask organisers of events to ensure full and equal contribution fro…read more

Skills for Care

Oonagh Smyth: celebrating the social care workforce

13 Apr 2022

Our CEO Oonagh Smyth reflects on what we’ve learnt about people working in adult social care during the pandemic and what’s next for the sector as we …read more

Skills for Care

Policy

Migration rule changes are welcome but are only part of the recruitment solution

07 Mar 2022

Our CEO Oonagh Smyth welcomes recent changes to the migration rules but says it is only part of the solution. read more

Recruitment

Workforce planning

Policy

Our CEO Oonagh Smyth reflects on the latest vacancy rates across adult social care and what we're doing to help employers recruit and retain staff.

19 Jan 2022

One of the things we use the data employers supply to our Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) for is to track monthly trends across the sec…read more

Recruitment

Retention

Skills for Care

Workforce planning

An end of year message from our CEO Oonagh Smyth

22 Dec 2021

Hear what Skills for Care CEO Oonagh Smyth has to say about the past year in the sector. read more

Skills for Care

ASC-WDS

Leadership

Wellbeing

A thank you from our CEO to all employers who contribute to ASC-WDS

14 Oct 2021

Our CEO Oonagh Smyth extends her thank you to all our ASC-WDS users who contribute vital sector insights which help to shape policies and decision mak…read more

ASC-WDS