Adult social care workforce grows again to meet increasing demand

The number of people working in adult social care across has increased again to 1.52 million according to a new report by Skills for Care.

Their annual ‘Size and structure of the adult social care workforce in England’ report also reveals thatif the adult social care workforce grows proportional to the projected number of people aged 65 and over in the population, then the number of adult social care jobs would need to increase by 520,000 jobs to around 2.17 million jobs by 2035.

Skills for Care’s Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) is funded by the Department of Health and Social care and uses workforce data supplied by twenty thousand frontline employers. The data used in this report for the 2019/20 period was collected prior to the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in England.

Other key findings from the report include:

• An estimated 18,200 organisations[1] were involved in providing or organising adult social care in England.
• An estimated 38,000 establishments[2] were involved in providing or organising adult social care in England.
• It is estimated that approximately 70,000 direct payment recipients [3] were employing their own staff.
• Since 2012/13, the number of adult social care jobs has increased by 9% or 130,000 jobs, to 1.65 million jobs in 2019/20.
• The rate of increase for adult social care jobs has slowed – between 2014/15 and 2019/20, the workforce grew by around 15,000 jobs per year compared to an average increase of 26,000 jobs per year between 2012/13 and 2014/15.
• Since 2012/13, the workforce has continued to shift away from local authority jobs (a decrease of 25%, or 37,000 jobs) and towards independent sector jobs (an increase of 11%, or 130,000 jobs).
• The number of jobs in domiciliary services increased at a faster rate between 2012/13 and 2019/20 - an increase of 95,000 jobs and 15% - than jobs in residential services - an increase of 25,000 jobs and 4%.
• Registered nurses were one of the only jobs in adult social care to see a significant decrease over the period down 15,500, or 30% since 2012/13.

Skills for Care CEO Oonagh Smyth said: “We are grateful to all the employers who have contributed their data because as we start to think about what the adult social care sector will look like after the pandemic it is vital we do that based on the gold standard data in this report.”

“This report is a reminder of the vital role our growing workforce will play in any future reform of our sector and their skills, knowledge and commitment to person centred care will support people to live the lives they want to.”

The full report can be downloaded here www.skillsforcare.org.uk/sizeandstructure

Notes to Editors:

The data used in this report for the 2019/20 period was collected prior to the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in England.

The ASC-WDS data used for the 2019/20 period was collected over the course of the year (April 2019 to March 2020) and data submitted in March 2020 was carefully analysed to ensure it did not significantly impact the findings.

Therefore, the report does not show how COVID-19 has impacted the adult social care workforce. It should be used as a baseline for the composition of the workforce prior to COVID-19 and to give context to any further research or data collected after March 2020.

Skills for Care is analysing ASC-WDS data on a monthly basis to monitor the impact of COVID-19 on the sector and workforce. The outputs from this analysis can be found on the COVID-19 section of our Workforce Intelligence website[4].

Media Contact: Paul Clarke – 07540 542495

paul.clarke@skillsforcare.org.uk

[1] The total number of PAYE or VAT registered whole organisations (i.e. enterprises). See Section 2 for definitions.

[2] The total number of PAYE or VAT registered establishments (i.e. local units). See Section 3 for definitions.

[3] Estimates of the number of direct payment recipients employing staff and estimates of the number of jobs in this area should be treated with caution. See Section 4.

[4] www.skillsforcare.org.uk/adult-social-care-workforce-data/Workforce-intelligence/publications/Topics/COVID-19

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