Better career progression needed

Keeping workforce issues high on the political agenda will be a
challenge as policy concentrates on changes to structure, delegates
were told during a session on the future social care workforce.

Liz Kendall, chief executive of the Maternity Alliance, said
“changes to workforce were as equally as important as changes to
structure”.

Kendall, who worked previously for the Institute for Public Policy
Research and was one of the authors of the think-tank’s From
Welfare to Well-being report, said the Agenda for Change
framework in the NHS could be used as a model for the social care
workforce. This provided good career progression and movement
across different health roles and had helped with the introduction
of new roles.

But Unison’s national officer for social services, Owen Davies,
said the lessons from the Agenda for Change programme were
“limited” as there were “25,000 employers in social care and one
employer in the NHS”.

Bill McKitterick, director of social services at Bristol and
chairperson of the Association of Directors of Social Services
workforce committee, said one of the main challenges was to build
“a flexible and attractive career with transferable skills that
would attract young people”.

Universities hindered progress by not allowing NVQs to contribute
as credits to the new degree, he said.