Skills for Care reflects on the year with 2021 highlights campaign

Throughout December, Skills for Care is reflecting on the past year with our #2021Highlights campaign.

In the run up to the end of the year we’ll be looking back at some of our key activity through 2021 to help support the adult social care workforce to lead, deliver and grow – including the launch of new projects, reports, and guidance, new additions to our website, and the development of our new four-year strategy.

As part of the campaign, we’ll also be sharing good news stories from across the sector to shine a light on the great work that has been happening across the social care workforce and to share some of the moments of joy during what has been another challenging year.

We’ll also be sharing blogs and articles from our team including a guide to getting ready for winter and an end of year message from our CEO Oonagh Smyth.

Plus, we’ll be rounding up some of our key highlights and insights from our work in a series of infographics on our website, and you can keep up with everything from the campaign on social media using #2021Highlights.

We know the past year has been a difficult one for the sector, and we’ve been proud to be able to support the workforce where we can. The aim of this campaign is to reflect on the work that we’ve been doing in 2021 and to spotlight the support and resources that we have available, including those that have been newly developed this year to help with current challenges.

Highlights that we’ll be sharing from the year include the release of our first ever Accolades magazine; the launch of our annual ‘State of the Adult Social Care Sector and Workforce in England report’; the success of our 'Moving up' programme to support leaders with a diverse background; the creation of numerous new guides to support student nurses and nursing associates within social care, and the development of a range of wellbeing resources.

This year we’ve continued to deliver more of our offer online to allow for increased accessibility. In 2021 almost one million visitors have accessed the Skills for Care website, and we ran over 330 virtual events attracting over 13,000 attendees.

2021 also saw the completion of the first series of our new podcast ‘The care exchange.’

We’ve been proud to continue providing support for registered managers and we’re pleased to hear that this support has been valuable during the challenges of this year. Over 6,868 attendees attended our 461 network meetings this year, and 78% of our local manager networks now have a WhatsApp group. Our registered manager webinars which cover a range of topics to support managers and their services were viewed over 10,000 times this year.

We were also delighted to see that our ‘Moving up’ programme was fully booked for 2021.

Our online data collection service, the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) is the leading source of workforce intelligence for the social care workforce in England and is used by around 20,000 care providers. In November 2021, we launched the ASC-WDS Benefits Bundle to offer account holders access to special offers and discounts across our products.

The ‘State of adult social care workforce in England’ report which looks at workforce characteristics, issues and trends was released in October. The interactive data visualisation supporting the report has already been viewed over 17,500 times.

This year we also released our 'The value of adult social care in England’ report which showed adult social care contributes at least £50.3 billion to the economy in England and provides significant societal benefits.

At the end of what has been another unique year for the sector, we’re proud to look back at the support that we’ve offered, and we aim to provide more support and information to the workforce in 2022, to continue to help you to provide the best care and support for our communities.

Find out more about our #2021Highlights on our spotlight area.

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