Skills for Care launches ASC-WDS data service and new Benefits Bundle
22 Nov 2021
Skills for Care is celebrating the launch of the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS), funded by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), as the leading source of workforce intelligence for the adult social care sector in England.
The service first went live with its core functionality in 2019 as a minimum viable product, and since then our Workforce Intelligence team has been working on adding more useful features to the service based on the feedback from the 20,000 social care employers already inputting their data.
Following this ongoing development work, we’re now shining a light on the service with its official launch.
As part of this, we’ve also introduced our new Benefits Bundle which provides social care employers who have an ASC-WDS account with access to a wide range of exclusive benefits and discounts.
ASC-WDS allows social care employers to manage team records, keep on top of training needs, and benchmark their service against other similar providers on metrics, including pay, sickness, turnover, and qualifications.
These insights can provide useful support for workforce planning, and the workforce data shared by social care employers is also used by Skills for Care to provide crucial insight into the sector across England.
The data underpins the development of Skills for Care’s annual ‘State of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ and ‘Size and structure of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ reports, and is used by key stakeholders including the Government, DHSC, local authorities and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to aid planning and shape policies and decisions about the sector, including decisions around the impacts of COVID-19, Brexit, and current recruitment challenges.
ASC-WDS users also gain access to training programmes, such as the ‘Rapid induction programme’ which supports new entrants into care to gain essential knowledge so that they’re ready to start work.
Additionally, an up-to-date ASC-WDS account means adult social care providers are eligible to claim from the Workforce Development Fund (WDF). In 2020-21 funding was provided to support over 18,000 qualifications, learning programmes and digital modules.
The new Benefits Bundle, launched this week, will provide all new and existing ASC-WDS account holders with special offers and discounts across Skills for Care’s products and services, including 10% off all items in our bookshop and our e-learning modules.
Skills for Care CEO Oonagh Smyth says:
Following our initial go-live two years ago we already have 20,000 employers using the service and providing us with valuable insights which are used to create our national reports and feed into key decisions and discussions among the Government, DHSC and other key stakeholders.
We are excited to now officially launch the service and we want to encourage more social care employers to sign up to share their insights. It also means they can make use of all of the practical benefits which the service offers to easily manage key workforce data, including staff records and training needs.
Our new Benefits Bundle for our ASC-WDS users is just one small way of saying thank you to employers for the important intelligence that they share with the sector.
Find out more about ASC-WDS and sign up.
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