How the ‘Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care’ will support integrated care systems

Continuing our #IntegratedCare campaign, Jane Brightman explores how the recently launched ‘Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care’ will help integrated care systems (ICS) facilitate better workforce planning and more effective care.

On 18 July, the new ‘Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care’ was launched. It aims to provide a clear path forward for the sector to grow in a way that can support future care requirements and lead to better conditions for those working in care. Development of the strategy has been supported by organisations and people from across the health and care sector, including ICSs and the NHS.

The strategy’s recommendations focus on three key areas:

1. Attract and retain
2. Train
3. Transform

The Strategy offers a coherent narrative for the positive development of the adult social care sector, in addition to helping it become better understood by our health sector partners. The work of ICSs is critical to the Strategy, with many of its recommendations intended to support their continued development and integration more broadly.

Perhaps the most obvious benefit of the ‘Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care’ to ICSs is the guidance and supporting data that it provides to those involved in workforce planning and development. The ‘single workforce’ mindset adopted by ICSs is intended to create a workforce of health and social care staff who can work flexibly across organisations and sectors, relying on experience gained through integrated working to bring valuable skills and knowledge into new roles.

To this end, the Strategy clearly explains the most recent adult social care data, setting out the types and numbers of adult social care roles needed in the future, giving integrated care systems a framework for easier workforce planning.

When developing the Strategy, our collective aim was to recognise the interconnected nature with the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan to support further integration with the work of the ICSs. This was achieved through extensive collaboration with NHS and ICS partners and has resulted in a Strategy which, although it stands independently, complements its NHS counterpart through the adoption of shared priorities.

As the NHS Long Term Plan pre-dates the launch of the ICSs, they have benefitted from a clear overarching health strategy since their inception, allowing each of them to pursue a common vision while addressing their unique regional challenges. Lacking a unified strategy to guide adult social care priorities has led to a lack of parity between health and social care within ICSs, making integration significantly more difficult. By creating the Strategy with our collective goals and visions in mind, we believe we’re removing this roadblock to further integration and better care outcomes.

In addition to facilitating integration across health and social care, this increased parity between the sectors supports us in building a united culture between the two. By having distinct strategies that contain linked priorities, health and social care organisations and staff are better able to understand the mindset and values that drives others.

We believe that the ‘Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care’ is an important step in supporting integration and the work of the 42 ICSs across England. We’re extremely hopeful that increased adoption of the Strategy will not only lead to more collaboration, but also lead to better care outcomes and opportunities to those working across both health and social care.

Read more about our ‘Making integration happen’ or the ‘Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care’ by visiting our hub pages.

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