It is day three of Care Home Week 18 and today we are focusing on workforce. We thought this would be a great opportunity to share the findings of a recent Scottish Care report: The 4 Rs - The open doors of recruitment & retention in social care.

The report shows:

• Employers have seen an almost 20% increase in those over the age of 45 applying for care vacancies.
• Providers are operating a wide range of workplace benefits and initiatives to help with the retention of staff, most of which are premised on the importance of giving staff a voice and a sense of value.

However, it also highlights:

• 63% of staff who have left the sector in the last year did so within the first 6 months of employment, mostly because of mutual unsuitability identified by the employer and employee.
• Providers believe the lack of responses to advertised care vacancies plus competition with other employers and sectors to be the main reasons for recruitment difficulty.

You can read the full report below:

The 4Rs Report

Scottish Care’s National Workforce Lead, Katharine Ross said:

“A career in care is not the same for everybody but it needs to be available to everybody. This report captures the employment journey of so many committed, dedicated and skilled individuals of different ages, backgrounds and experiences working in care homes and care at home organisations across Scotland.

"However, it also shows the reality facing the care sector:

• The reality of trying to develop, train, qualify and lead a workforce against a backdrop of task and time commissioning, fifteen minute visits and the persistent denial by policy and decision makers of the true cost of delivering dignified, person led, preventative care and support to older citizens across the country in care homes and care at home organisations.
• The reality that the potential of health and social care integration is yet to be realised in Scotland and we continue to see the confliction of a health or social care workforce.
• The reality that a largely unappreciated and undervalued social care workforce, delivering compassionate care to individuals with multiple complex mental and physical illness, is at breaking point.
• The reality that fewer people are choosing to work within the sector, and more people are leaving.

“Only by acknowledging these realities will we be able to shut the door through which dedicated and skilled individuals are flooding out from, and create conditions where people enter, stay, develop and thrive in the care sector. It is the only way to ensure the development of a rights-based, dignified social care system for the tens of thousands of older people receiving care in their own home, or in a care home.”

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