One of the unforeseen silver linings on the all-encompassing big black Covid-19 cloud is the important work social care providers do has come to the public’s attention.
Coupled with the mass redundancies that are the unfortunate side effect of the global pandemic, resulting in a pool of potential workers, there could be an opportunity here to recruit new social care staff and, more importantly, keep them.
Working in social care settings has traditionally been only considered by people who have had contact with the sector or are desperate for a job. The latter are expected to be off once the latest supermarket opens in their area offering an easier ride for similar or better wages.
Part of the reason for this is not everyone is cut out to work in social care but there are many transferrable skills from industries that have been hit by the virus such as retail and hospitality. Apart from excellent people skills, this group knows how to work hard.
Another reason is the low pay on offer to carry out a highly-skilled job that is still not taken seriously as a profession. So how can this situation be changed?
One option is to formalise the training every member of staff needs into one body. This would have the double benefit of ensuring every worker is trained to a basic level and the prospective employee would have to invest the time in doing a course. It becomes far harder to leave a job once you have invested the time into completing the training and would offer a clear and simple progression path to someone thinking of entering the sector.
This could be further enhanced by adding a healthcare element to the training, expanding the offering to also work in healthcare settings.
Care England’s Martin Green has called for a seamless career path between the two sectors and opening up the opportunities a social care qualification can offer would be one way to do this.
It would give workers from both sides of the NHS/social care divide an understanding and, crucially, an appreciation of both disciplines, paving the way for better joint working practices. Furthermore, a healthcare aspect would make it far more attractive to potential workers, capitalising on the status working for the NHS currently holds.
Of course, there have been attempts in the past by some of the larger care providers to set up these academies which have floundered for various reasons. But having a national programme, backed by the Government, to earn a uniform qualification that includes training on dealing with outbreaks on the scale of Covid-19, could further boost public confidence in the care workforce while offering workers a similar status to that afforded to those working in the NHS.
But, of course, this all costs money and with the current fragility of the care home market, putting the responsibility for having a solid and stable workforce on providers is not going to work. There is a strong argument for making the academy publicly funded as it would need to be a long-term investment.
The Government could do worse than put in place funds for a national health and social care academy as part of a strategy to fend off future pandemics. There would be wide-spread support as both a creator of jobs and a barrier against outbreaks.
With a social care White Paper apparently on the horizon, this is the perfect time to push for this workforce investment. Over to you Boris...