Ageless at Work - Skills for Care

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5. WIDER INFLUENCES ON THE ADULT SOCIAL CARE SECTOR What has been the impact of the recession on the adult social care sector? The way official headline statistics are published makes it difficult to accurately measure the impact of the recession on the adult social care sector since statistics are usually combined with those for other sectors. Notwithstanding this, there are certainly signs that this broader sector has fared relatively well during the recession: - The health and social care sector grew by 3.3% over the last year – a greater percentage than any other sector in the UK (ONS, 2009a) - The even broader ‘education, health and public administration sector’ was the only sector to report job growth over the past year, had the smallest contraction in vacancies (ONS, 2009b) and has the lowest redundancy rate (ONS 2009c) - Skills for Care and Development has reported that ‘overall the recession is increasing demand for many social care services’ (Alliance, 2009) - The number of vacancies in selected care related occupations notified to Jobcentre Plus nationally increased by 16 percent over the past year. This is in contrast to the fall of 16 percent recorded across all occupations 14 . One in ten vacancies notified to Jobcentre Plus nationally in July 2009 were in care related occupations. - Nationally, the number of unfilled vacancies in care work is only slightly higher than the number of registered jobseekers wanting to work in the sector 15 . This compares to the overall ratio of seven jobseekers for every unfilled vacancy registered with the jobcentre. Regional data on the impact of the recession on the care sector is restricted to information about the number of job vacancies notified to the jobcentre and the number of jobseekers looking for care related work. Changes in the number of vacancies for care related occupations, care assistants and home carers and all occupations in the South West, over the last two years are illustrated in Figure 2 (the number of vacancies are indexed at 100 for July 2007). Two main observations can be drawn from the chart. Firstly, that demand for care assistants and home carers has followed a similar trend to that of all care-occupations which is not surprising since on average care assistants and home carers account for four in every five care-related vacancies. The second observation is that demand for care-related workers followed a similar trend to that of all vacancies notified to the jobcentre until the summer 2008 – when the recession started - but has subsequently performed rather better. The number of care-related vacancies notified to jobcentres in the region in July 2009 was 43 percent higher than the same month two years earlier, compared to a decline of 14 percent in vacancies across all occupations. 14 Vacancies in care-related occupations increased by more than twice the national amount (38 percent) in the South West of England over the same period. 15 In July 2009, 32,205 registered jobseekers in England were looking for care-related work, and 26,913 unfilled vacancies in care-related occupations (Jobcentre Plus data accessed from NOMIS). Ageless at Work: Change workplace cultures, development skills. Good practice report 47
Figure 2 Vacancies notified to Jobcentre Plus, South West, July 2007 to July 2009 Care assistants and home carers Care related occupations All occupations 200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 Jul-07 Aug-07 Sep-07 Oct-07 Nov-07 Dec-07 Jan-08 Feb-08 Mar-08 Apr-08 May-08 Jun-08 Jul-08 Aug-08 Sep-08 Oct-08 Nov-08 Dec-08 Jan-09 Feb-09 Mar-09 Apr-09 May-09 Jun-09 Jul-09 Source: Jobcentre Plus data accessed from Nomis Comparing the stock of unfilled vacancies with registered jobseekers also reveals a source for optimism since the number of vacancies only marginally exceeds those looking for this kind of work (Table 14). The balance between jobseekers and job opportunities varies considerably across the different types of care work, with competition highest for youth and community workers (with 6 jobseekers per vacancy) and lowest for care assistant and home carers (with less than 1 jobseeker per vacancy). Competition for jobs as housing and welfare officers, occupational therapists, social workers, house-parents and residential wardens and nursing auxiliaries and assistants is slightly lower than that for all occupations. 48 Ageless at Work: Change workplace cultures, development skills. Good practice report
Page 1 and 2: we help create a trained and qualif
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS 1. Introduction ..........
Page 5 and 6: Index of Tables Table 1 Six things
Page 7 and 8: While organisational change had bee
Page 9 and 10: 2. POLICY CONTEXT Why and how is ad
Page 11 and 12: Ensuring the right steps are taken
Page 13 and 14: Table 3 Workforce remodelling: prio
Page 15 and 16: What is already happening to suppor
Page 17 and 18: Personalisation agenda as set out i
Page 19 and 20: Responses to an open question about
Page 21 and 22: What works in enhancing leadership
Page 23 and 24: Skills for Care London also trailed
Page 25 and 26: Table 7 Engage the workforc
Page 27 and 28: Table 8 What needs to be done to in
Page 29 and 30: • Support and enable people to us
Page 31 and 32: People who use services as drivers
Page 33 and 34: There is also evidence that older p
Page 35 and 36: - Training conflicted with the work
Page 37 and 38: articulate the experience, knowledg
Page 39 and 40: ‘unlikely’ learners 12 aged 55
Page 41 and 42: personalisation’. The results of
Page 43 and 44: Mentoring is cited as a “fundamen
Page 45 and 46: • Yearly (or more frequent) suppo
Page 47: Secondly, the project could test ne
Page 51 and 52: A recent survey by the ADASS/LGA (2
Page 53 and 54: Figure 5 Projected working age popu
Page 55 and 56: Table 15 Trends and drivers affecti
Page 57 and 58: Table 16 Health status of the popul
Page 59 and 60: Table 16 Main features of the ‘in
Page 61 and 62: 6. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PROJECT ACTI
Page 63 and 64: Activities that challenge older wor
Page 65 and 66: ECOTEC (Undated) European Social Fu
Page 67: Tick Tock (2007) Tick Tock: An EQUA

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