How the ‘Workforce strategy for adult social care’ will support integrated care

We hear from Kate Sims, Director of People at NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board, on how the ‘Workforce strategy for adult social care’ will support integration between health and social care services.

I recently had the pleasure of supporting the development of the ‘Workforce strategy for adult social care’ as a member of the integration expert working group, sharing my views on how the strategy might support integrated care. As a representative of an integrated care system (ICS), I wanted to discuss the unique opportunity that the strategy has to make a significant impact on integration between health and care services.

The ‘Workforce strategy for adult social care’ is intended to identify the adult social care workforce needs over the next 15 years and set out a plan for ensuring the sector has enough of the right people with the right skills. When it comes to integrated care, it aims to create a cohesive approach to workforce planning and ensure that our health and social care systems work collaboratively.

The first way in which I believe the strategy is crucial to integration is that it looks to align workforce plans across both the health and social care sectors. True system integration requires that our workforce plans are not developed in isolation but are interconnected. The NHS published a long-term workforce plan last year, and I believe that creating a care sector counterpart for this strategy will enable us to better align the priorities of both.

The structure and direction that the strategy will provide is another important element that I think the sector currently lacks. The strategy articulates a unified ambition and plan for the workforce, making long-term workforce planning and role development much easier. By offering a framework that workforce planners across adult social care can draw on, we’re enabling them to plan according to the same objectives, which I believe will support integrated care by promoting a more unified approach to workforce planning.

These concerns and objectives relate not only to our health and care organisations, but also to our educational establishments and training providers. This is one area I’m particularly keen to highlight, as we need to pay special attention to making sure our sector partners are adequately prepared to support the growth of our sector and the increasingly interconnected nature of health and social care services. By having a dedicated strategy in place, I feel we will be better equipped to discuss what future requirements within social care education will look like, both in terms of the quantity of placements required to meet growth targets and in the structure and content of educational programmes, such as apprenticeships.

I also think it is important that we recognise the challenges associated with the adoption of the strategy, if it is have the desired impact. These challenges go beyond the obvious, such as the availability of resources to support implementation, but also include maintaining long-term commitment to the strategy and ensuring stakeholder engagement. As an ICS, we aim to address these issues by bringing together the right people and consistently promoting the strategy’s core messages.

An example of this in action within West Yorkshire is the launch of our Strategic Workforce Forum in July of this year. This initiative will bring together health, social care, local authorities, primary care, and the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sectors with education colleagues to respond to critical workforce planning issues, as well as test our collective readiness for the responding to the long-term workforce plans. The ‘Workforce strategy for adult social care’ will play a key role, alongside the NHS Long Term Plan, in guiding the strategic agenda of this forum. We’re hopeful that this initiative and others like it, will help retain commitment to the strategy into the future.

When it comes to measuring the success of the strategy, the obvious measures are likely to be amongst the best – improved attraction rates to roles within health and care, lower vacancies and ultimately a higher quality of care. However, I think it is also important to take into account the more qualitative factors, such as employee experience, when looking to see how effective the strategy has been at supporting retention, as staff see the prospect of longer-term careers within and across the sectors. When assessing the true impact of the strategy, we will have to consider carefully what the data, including from staff surveys, is telling us about the experience across multidisciplinary teams and care organisations.

As we move forward, I am confident that this strategy will significantly contribute to our ability to deliver high-quality, person-centred care. It is a testament to our commitment to making our health and care services more collaborative and to making sure the adult social care sector’s voice is heard in supporting its workforce.

The ‘Workforce strategy for adult social care’ is launching 18 July 2024. You can find more information on the strategy by visiting our website: A workforce strategy for adult social care (skillsforcare.org.uk). You can also sign up for our online launch event here: Workforce strategy launch 2024 - Virtual event (skillsforcare.org.uk).

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