Government pledges £600m towards social care workforce

The government’s latest funding commitment to support the social care workforce must be backed by a long-term workforce plan, leaders from the sector have urged.

Last week the Department of Health and Social Care unveiled a £600m funding package, spread over two years, that aims to help improve recruitment and retention in the sector.

Of this, £570m will be given to local authorities as flexible funding to allow them to tailor it to local needs, with a focus on workforce pay.

Meanwhile the remaining £30m will be made available to local authorities on a targeted basis to support those in the most challenged systems.

Minister for care, Helen Whately, said: “Our investment in social care means more funding to go to the front line.

“This matters because support for our care workforce is the key to more care and better care.

“A stronger social care system, hand in hand with our NHS, will help people get the care they need, when and where they need it.”

“This fund should serve as a watershed moment to be ambitious and move towards an integrated system that serves to benefit us all"

- Martin Green

In a letter sent last week to local authorities, Ms Whately explained that the £570m workforce funding would be provided over two years through the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund.

In 2023-24 local authorities will receive £365m and in 2024-25 they will get £205m.

She urged local authorities to work closely with providers to use the £570m funding “to grow workforce capacity, for example, by investing in improved pay for people who work in care”.

In addition, Ms Whately noted that the remaining £30m would be given to local authorities “on a targeted basis to reflect local pressures this winter in relation to urgent and emergency care".

The £600m cash injection comes as part of the remaining funds from the Next Steps to Put People at the Heart of Care plan, which promised £1.7bn funding for social care reform over three years.

The plan initially promised £500m towards the social care workforce, leading to concern and confusion in April when only £250m was committed.

As such, the latest £600m pledge towards the social care workforce, which is in addition to the £250m, has been welcomed by many leaders in the social care sector.

Oonagh Smyth, chief executive of Skills for Care, said: “Support for local authorities to improve capacity in social care will help ensure that we can attract and keep more of the right people with the right skills.

“This is vitally important because our latest figures show that there were around 152,000 vacancies on any given day in 2022-23.

“Improved capacity ultimately means a better experience for the people who draw on care and support.”

Liz Jones, policy director at the National Care Forum, said she hoped that the money enabled providers to reward their staff better “well in advance of winter pressures”.

She said: “We hope that our local authority colleagues will use this injection of funding to pay providers properly for the care and support they provide and ensure that we are able to better reward our social care workforce properly.

“It is essential that our fantastic workforce feel the benefit of this extra cash and we hope that the result will be an easier winter for both those delivering care and support and those receiving it.”

However, Ms Jones said a long-term social care workforce plan, to sit alongside the recently published NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, was “key to ensuring a sustainable social care workforce for the years to come”.

Martin Green, the chief executive of Care England, echoed this, and said it must be known that the injection of funding “is by no means a substitute for an equivalent long-term plan for social care”.

He said: “Without addressing the issues inherently embedded within our sector through additional long-term funding commitments, the ambition to reduce avoidable admissions and support the discharge of patients from hospital, will remain an ambition rather than an actuality. “

Professor Green warned that the social care sector did not want to experience the same issues it encounters “year after year during the winter months”

“This fund should serve as a watershed moment to be ambitious and move towards an integrated system that serves to benefit us all,” he said.

Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, also joined the calls for a long-term workforce plan for the social care sector.

He said: “Health leaders will look forward to seeing the funding put to good use especially as they plan for winter, but without a long-term workforce plan for social care, vacancy gaps and supporting hospital discharge will be an ongoing issue that will never fully be resolved.

“We urge the government to set out this plan, so staff and patients alike can feel supported in their communities for the years to come.”