How workforce data helps us make better decisions about care

The people who work in social care are vital to people like me, who draw on social care, to be able to live our lives. I employ PAs which means I can work, socialise and also do the boring things like empty the bins! This data is important to be able to spot trends and should enable policy makers to identify where they need to make changes to ensure that there are enough people working in social care and that they enjoy their roles and stay in what can be rewarding roles.

Workforce data has underpinned our workforce strategies in Nottinghamshire, and we are constantly seeking to improve it. We work to understand both our internal workforce (about 1,800 people) and our wider care workforce of around 35,000 people. This helps us understand how well we are recruiting, how we need to change the way we work, the impact of our retention activities, and where we need to invest development time.

A really important area for us is in Equality Diversity and Inclusion. We have very poor data so we have worked hard to encourage the workforce to report their personal information, to refine our systems to understand it better, and through being a Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) pilot, work to act on the insight the data gives us. Advancing equalities is a priority and we have a long way to go, but our starting place has been in working to improve data quality and regularly looking at this, and then with the workforce, making sense of where we are and what action we need to take. Alongside qualitative feedback we get from wellbeing surveys and the annual health check, workforce data is crucial in understanding the impact of the measure we put into place to develop and grow our workforce.

Social care workforce data provides critical intelligence for the whole of the social care ecosystem. At SCIE, we have used the data in three ways:

1) For research studies about the workforce, such as how best to meet the skills and training needs of frontline care workers.

2) For policy development, such as demonstrating how workforce investment helps tackle gaps in care access and provision – and raise standards of care.

3) For practice improvement, from improving local commissioning to designing services that better meet people’s care needs.

The Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set provides vital insights into the social care workforce annually and the picture over time with hugely valuable trends data. Given that the social care sector employs 1.6m people across the country and needs to recruit many more in future years, this [ASC-WDS] data is more important than ever and is the most comprehensive workforce data set that we have. From a policy and influencing perspective, this data set offers invaluable in terms of intelligence and from an individual provider perspective, it offers benchmarking insights in terms of key workforce metrics around pay, turnover, absence.

We are fortunate in social care to have some good data that is provided by Skills for Care, so our views on the workforce issues are based in data analysis, rather than opinions. This gives much more strength to argument and makes our assertions on what is needed to secure the future of social care, irrefutable

Workforce data is essential in addressing the increasing demand for mental health services across England. With more than 8 million individuals engaged with mental health charities across England and 1.2 million individuals waiting to access care, understanding the workforce landscape is critical for strategic planning. Last year 23/24 Skills for Care report shows a workforce of 565,000 in mental health social care, yet with 1 in 8 jobs unfilled. At the Association we use the data within our interactive workforce map identifying service gaps, supporting commissioners in making informed decisions, and advocating for much-needed funding to build a sustainable workforce.