New government campaign to recruit more adult social care staff

A new national recruitment campaign has been launched by the government designed to help fill the 110,000 vacancies that currently exist in the adult social care sector.

The Every Day Is Different campaign website can be found at https://bit.ly/2E4qrjd.

The Department of Health and Social Care states that the campaign aims to:

• attract new people with the right values to the sector and increase interest in adult social care as a vocation
• highlight the range of job roles, with an initial focus on direct care roles such as care workers, where there is the most demand
• equip the social care sector with the marketing tools to support the campaign, and advice to recruit and retain the right people, to address a high turnover rate.

The website explores some of the roles that are available in both domiciliary care and in residential care. Care workers, support workers, care assistants, activities workers and shared lives carers are all included. A ‘Find a Job’ link takes people through to a searchable list of current jobs. A Facebook link provides first hand accounts from staff about what it is actually like to work in the sector.

The campaign has been developed in close collaboration with the adult social care sector. It will run during February and March through social media, digital and local radio advertising, outdoor posters and events across England. The advertising features real care workers and the people they support. In particular, the campaign seeks to show how rewarding social care careers can be and to also highlight the opportunities for progression and professional development there are in the sector. Its main focus will be on people aged 20 to 39 who, research suggests, are the most likely to consider a role in adult social care in the next 12 months.

Adult social care providers are being encouraged to engage with the campaign by providing case studies and by promoting social media content using the hashtag #shareifyoucare.

Providers can advertise their vacancies on the GOV.UK Find a Job website at www.gov.uk/jobsearch.

Launching the campaign, Minister of State for Care Caroline Dinenage said:

‘There is huge demand for more care professionals who work incredibly hard to look after the most vulnerable people in our society. We must spread the word that careers in adult social care can be rewarding, varied and worthwhile. Care is a vocation where you can transform people’s lives and every day is different to the next.’

The Every Day Is Different campaign is being supported by Skills for Care.

The high vacancy rate in adult social care has long been identified as a potentially critical issue for the sector. Over 1.45 million people work in adult social care at the moment. It is predicted an additional 650,000 workers will be needed by 2035 to keep up with the rising numbers of people aged 65 and over.

A Skills for Care report published in September 2018, The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England, found that the staff turnover rate in social care was 30.7%, equivalent to around 390,000 leavers in the previous 12 months.