Released On 3rd Jul 2023
Sector response to workforce plan
Leading voices in the adult social care sector have issued their response to the publication of the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan.
Coming ahead of the health service’s 75th anniversary, the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out how the NHS will address existing vacancies and meet the challenges of a growing and ageing population by recruiting and retaining hundreds of thousands more staff over 15 years and working in new ways.
According to the NHS, the plan is a once in a generation opportunity to put staffing on a sustainable footing and improve patient care. It focusses on retaining existing talent and making the best use of new technology alongside the biggest recruitment drive in health service history to address the gap.
The plan was commissioned and accepted by Government, which has backed the plan with over £2.4bn to fund additional education and training places over five years on top of existing funding commitments.
In response to the publication of the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, Professor Vic Rayner OBE, Chief Executive Officer of the National Care Forum (NCF), said, 'Today’s delayed workforce plan publication bears no relation to the much-vaunted integrated workforce commission of 2021. In 2021, Health Education England was commissioned to review the long term strategic changes needed for the health and social care workforce to support patients and the population of the future. What has appeared is a plan that only talks to the needs of the NHS and has a glaring gap around professionals within adult social care and any non-clinical professional in health and social care.
'The irony of publication on the day before the first anniversary of the establishment of the Integrated Care Systems should not be ignored. It makes repeated reference to integration, recognising the importance of stabilising and improving adult social care in making this plan a success, but contains no plans for how the Government would do this. This seems extremely short-sighted and is characteristic of an ongoing de-prioritisation of social care, which has seen reforms delayed, scrapped and reduced in scope over the last few years.
'This document, as originally scoped, should be a tale of two workforces coming together as one, yet this plan risks putting yet more strategic and operational distance between the two. We should not forget that this year is also the 75th anniversary of social care and yet only the health workforce is getting both a plan and additional funding – funding that is nearly ten times greater than the current plans to address workforce reform across the whole 1.6 million strong care workforce.'
Independent Care Group (ICG) Chair, Mike Padgham, said, 'We have yet to see the detail of the NHS reform but from what I am hearing so far, it is the same old story, Cinderella social care isn’t going to the ball again. Worthy as the £2.4bn strategy is, to carry out NHS reform without giving similar reform to social care at the same time makes a mockery of the whole plan.
'The biggest issue in healthcare at the moment is that there isn’t enough care for people in the community so that they can be discharged from hospital or not have to go to hospital in the first place. Unless that is resolved, any reform of the NHS will surely be in vain.
'Without a properly funded and fully functioning social care system, NHS healthcare will be hampered, fighting to provide better care with a hand tied behind its back. We urgently need the two sectors to be merged, to create a National Care Service, bringing parity in funding to both sides of the equation and parity in pay, terms and conditions to the excellent staff who work in social care, take huge responsibility, stress and strain and have never been properly recognised.'
Helen Walker, Chief Executive at Carers UK, said, 'Carers UK is disappointed that the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan has not taken the option to specifically recognise the needs of unpaid carers who also work for the NHS. It is imperative that we now take forward the steps outlined in the NHS Assembly vision for the NHS on its 75th birthday which includes goals for unpaid carers.
'Around one in three NHS employees are also unpaid carers, so it's important the NHS provides effective support at work, so NHS workers don’t have to reduce their hours or leave their jobs. Neither are desirable for the NHS or the carers themselves.
'Carers UK’s Employers for Carers membership forum and our Carer Confident benchmarking scheme shows that many of our NHS members are already trailblazing and offering this additional support, such as paid leave or special leave for carers. But carers need this to be the case wherever they work.
'Carers UK encourage, and are ready to help, all NHS organisations to go above and beyond the minimum requirements and make carers an enhanced offer of support. By supporting unpaid carers, we can enhance recruitment and retention of staff, which benefits the NHS we all need and value in its 75th year and beyond.'