Formal recognition of the care sector through training and qualifications would provide a proof point for workers and a defined career path within the sector.
In our survey, 40% of respondents think a respected training qualification would make it easier to retain staff working in the care sector. In addition, 95% say a nationally approved social care qualification would be an effective way to improve perception of social care, with 38% saying it would be “very effective” and 57% saying it would be “somewhat effective”.
As Joanna Scott explains: “There’s a lot of training you have to do to be a carer, but it’s not recognised as a qualification. Why isn’t there a diploma to be a carer?”
New training modules in social care (including in the use of technology) as well as the recording of qualifications could help to create a more robust career path.
Skills For Care, the strategic workforce development and planning body for adult social care in England, argues that “investing in knowledge, skills, health and wellbeing, and recruitment policies to improve social care as a long-term career choice… have never been more important so that we can start to build the foundations to ensure that we have the workforce that we need now and in the future*.”
95%
of respondents say a nationally approved social care qualification would be an effective way to improve perception of social care
How effective, if at all, do you think the following ideas would be to improve the perception of social care?
Make it a requirement to have a nationally approved social care qualification?
Stephen Drysdale notes that a few organisations in Scotland are now opening their own training academies as a means of supporting staff to become qualified. Meanwhile, according to Yasmine John, CEO, My Care My Home, the University of South Wales is thinking about developing an integrated health degree that would include a practical element. This practical element could be working for a domiciliary care provider, for example, and will help those with little experience of working in the community see whether this kind of work is for them and thus support a sustainable workforce.
However, in Scotland, where a law has been proposed for a National Care Service that would transfer social care responsibility from local authorities to a new national service, the regulations on qualifications within social care have been tightened up, requiring staff to have an HNC (Higher National Certificate). According to Dr Drysdale, the impact of these new rules on qualifications “has deterred a number of people who have the values, skills and resilience to work alongside vulnerable children, but have been put off by the need for professional qualifications. These people have been a big loss, but they’ve not had the interest or seen themselves as academically able to do the academic qualification required.”
*Skills for Care. (2022). The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England report.