Review pinpoints missing skillsets

Options for Excellence, the government’s social care workforce review, has identified key gaps in commissioning, leadership and management skills, and the process for inducting new staff.

The subjects are likely to figure heavily in the review’s initial report,  according to Skills for Care chief executive Andrea Rowe, who sits on the Options for Excellence board, which met last week.

The report, which has been written with the aim of influencing next year’s comprehensive spending review, is due shortly, but will not be published and will instead just be circulated to ministers.

Rowe said commissioning skills were seen as being so important because of the increasing need for councils to support service users to commission their own care, under government plans to expand direct payments and roll out individual budgets.

The review is also looking at improving the evidence base on the impact of training on service quality, Rowe added.