Thank you for contributing to our ‘State of’ report for 2024

Our CEO, Oonagh Smyth, says thank you to adult social care providers for making this year’s ‘State of’ report possible.

Publishing our annual ‘State of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ report is one of the biggest events of the year for our organisation. It’s a huge piece of work which represents hundreds of hours of effort from our dedicated team.

The comprehensive report provides valuable data and analysis which is used by the Government and other key stakeholders to make decisions that impact the future of adult social care.

This report would not be possible without the contributions of over 20,000 adult social care providers who share their workforce data through the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) platform. I want to extend my sincere thanks to each of you for your invaluable contributions, which help shape this essential intelligence about the adult social care workforce.

We’re pleased to see that this year’s report has highlighted some positive improvements for adult social care – there was an increase in filled posts, fewer vacant posts, reduction in use of zero-hour contracts and an increase in male workers.

However, we do know that challenges remain for the social care sector, and this too is evident in the report. While vacancy levels have reduced, there are still 131,000 vacancies on any given day and a turnover rate of 24.2%, which equates to around 350,000 leavers per year.

In addition to this, it’s clear that many of the positive changes in the data are mainly due to the level of international recruitment in 2023/24. In this period, 105,000 international recruits started roles in social care – but there were 70,000 fewer people with a British nationality in the workforce than two years previously, in 2021/22.

From 11 March 2024, care workers arriving from outside of the UK were no longer allowed to bring dependants with them on their visa. Care providers sponsoring international recruits were also required to register with the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Following the announcement of these changes, according to data from the Home Office, the number of Health and Care Worker visas granted has decreased dramatically. In the year ending June 2024 there was a 26% decrease in visas granted to applicants. There was also a notable fall in visa applications over the last quarter, between April and June 2024, 81% lower than the same period in 2023.

Continued efforts to attract domestic workers, while navigating the complexities of international recruitment, will be key to ensuring the long-term stability of adult social care in England.

To help us tackle the issues that our sector faces, we recently published our ‘Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care’, a project which began partly as a response to last year’s ‘State of’ report findings. The Strategy identifies the social care workforce needs over the next 15 years and sets out a plan for ensuring the sector has enough of the right people with the right skills to meet those needs.

If you’ve not yet read this year’s report, I would encourage you to take a look. These insights can support you with gaining a better understanding of the current social care landscape and the challenges that our sector faces. It can also help with your thinking around key issues such as retention, workforce planning and recruitment.

If you’re not already signed up to ASC-WDS and sharing your insights to support the creation of our report and other intelligence, you can find out more about all the benefits of ASC-WDS and how to sign up on our webpage.

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