Ageless at Work - Skills for Care

Ensuring the right steps are taken to promote recruitment, retention, and career pathways to
provide the many talents the workforce needs;
Workforce remodelling and commissioning to achieve service transformation; and
Workforce development so we have the right people with the right skills; all to be in conjunction
with
• more joint and integrated working between social, health care and other sectors; and
• regulation for quality in services as well as public assurance.
Examining these priorities - alongside those identified in an earlier review of the social care workforce
Options for excellence published in March 2005 (Department of Health, 2006) and the Sector Skills
Agreement (2007) – through the ‘lens’ of the objectives of the Ageless at Work project, is helpful in
identifying potential themes for project work, and route-ways for effective mainstreaming. Tables 2 to
3 identify the key themes articulated in the national workforce strategy, the Gap Analysis and Market
Testing component of the Sector Skills Agreement (Skills for Care, 2007) and the regional plan for the
South West of England with respect to the national priorities of leadership, workforce remodelling and
commissioning and workforce development.
The tables identify several potential themes of issues worthy of further consideration or exploration in
the project. These include:
The intended audience for interventions supporting organisational change invites the question, if
leadership is crucial to driving cultural change, which leaders should the project seek to support?
Should it be those within service providers, commissioners of services, leaders representing the
interests of service users, elected members or local authority staff (including Directors of Social
Care)?
The need to support leadership and management skills in certain contexts, specifically microorganisations,
SMEs and the voluntary and community sectors
The potential for activities that support the development of future adult social care leaders
amongst the sector’s existing older workforce and those that are seeking to move into adult social
care from management or leadership roles in other contexts.
The need to ensure that leaders and managers are supported by good Human Resource practice
in particular, with respect to the recruitment, development and retention of older workers, and the
creation of ‘learning cultures’.
The importance of meeting the challenge of ensuring that training and learning activities are
flexible and take on board different learning styles.
The need to ensure project activities take a whole systems view of organisational change.
Explore opportunities to alleviate basic skills shortages by widening access to mainstream
provision through Skills for Life and Train to Gain.
The need to utilise opportunities of mainstream project findings through the newly formed – and
as yet not fully operational - National Skills Academy for Social Care.
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Ageless at Work: Change workplace cultures, development skills. Good practice report