Healthier working lives for the care workforce

Care homes for older people in south-east Scotland are largely run using paper-based management systems with 35% of care homes using an electronic care management system. 

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This report outlines the UK government’s plan for specific measures to support health and adult social care in England. It also sets out areas to work with the Scottish Government, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive to support people from all over the UK to live more independent, healthier lives for longer.

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The integration of health and social care has been a long-standing policy priority in each country of the UK. However, there is limited evidence these policies are delivering the results expected of them. This report looks at the impact of integration across the four countries and compares the policies and approaches each one has trialled to deliver their goals.

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The first Longevity Report was published in 2013. The latest update demonstrates a shift in the mix of sectors in the economy, with both health and education expanding further and new financial products arising. Such an economy has the potential to contribute to growth in gross domestic product through employment and human capital.

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The evidence review for adult social care reform is published alongside People at the Heart of Care. Its main purpose is to outline trends and challenges based on the current (as of 1 December 2021) adult social care system in England.

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This annual online survey of Carers, enables readers to learn about carers personal experience and build a picture of caring in the UK. Their 2021 survey was the largest yet and the report is based on feedback from over 8000 people who currently provide unpaid care to a friend or family member. The report shows the longer-term impacts of managing in a very difficult environment for a prolonged period of time and covers issues such as finance, health and wellbeing, the provision of support and services and the challenges of juggling multiple responsibilities.

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There has been a collective failure to deliver reform of adult social care in England for at least two decades. It has left a system struggling with a series of problems: an overly-stringent means test; catastrophic costs; unmet need; patchy care quality; poor workforce pay and conditions; a fragile provider market; disjointed care; and a ‘postcode lottery’ of access.

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This report sets out the CQC’s assessment of the state of care in England in 2020/21. They use data from our inspections and ratings, along with other information, including that from people who use services, their families and carers, to inform our judgements of the quality of care.

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This report identifies a number of key areas around which the reform of social care will achieve the sustainable and meaningful impact for people who access care and support.

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This Social Care 360 report uses the latest available data (2019/20) to describe the key trends in adult social care as the Covid-19 pandemic struck and to suggest what the impact of the pandemic might be. It paints quite a bleak picture of adult social care in England, with many key indicators already going in the wrong direction before the pandemic struck.

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May 2021. Living longer: Evidence cards | Centre for Ageing Better

This set of evidence cards summarises the key stats and context around England's ageing population through engaging and accessible infographics. The cards help professionals better understand the evidence base and opportunities around demographic changes and trends. The cards have been designed to be used in workshops to run an ‘evidence safari’, a collaborative and interactive way of exploring research and insight rapidly.

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November 2020. The state of ageing 2020. Centre for Ageing Better

October 2020. Health and wellbeing innovation commission; Connections and Loneliness | International Longevity Centre

This report brings together the case for improving social connections in later life and the scope for innovation.

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October 2019. Ageing gracefully | Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

This report looks at opportunities for the older workforce. Through inclusive policies and practices that make work friendly for the ageing workforce, they can extend working lives meaningfully and benefit from the talents of older workers.

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February 2019. The Perennials – The Future of ageing | Ipsos MORI

This global study, conducted in partnership with the Centre for Ageing Better illustrates the attitudes to ageing across 30 countries. Britons are overwhelmingly negative about old age. Only three in ten (30%) agree that they are looking forward to old age, while more than double (68%) disagree with this statement. Underpinning this negativity could be our expectations of later life; only 38% agree that they expect to be fit and healthy in old age, compared to one in five (22%) who disagree with this statement.

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July 2016 Future of an ageing population | Foresight

This report looks at the challenges and opportunities of an ageing society. The report brings together evidence about today’s older population, with future trends and projections, to identify the implications for the UK. This evidence will help government to develop the policies needed to adapt to an ageing population.

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Care providers across Scotland have told them that they have mixed experience of regulation and oversight and feel that there is confusion between the two. This report aims to capture the range of experience and the impact that is having upon the sector, as well as to explore potential improvement for the future.

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This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the adult social care workforce in England and the characteristics of the 1.54 million people working in it. Topics covered include: Changes in the adult social care workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic, employment information, recruitment and retention, demographics, pay, qualification rates and future workforce forecasts.

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This report prepared by the Digital Health and Care Directorate of the Scottish Government provides an update on the scale-up and adoption of digital health and care solutions in Scotland, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This report is intended to: inform our stakeholders of activity undertaken as part of the Scottish Government’s COVID-19 response; enable decision makers to identify areas for further prioritisation; inform the identification of key lessons learned; and share learning with other countries.

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The social care sector and social care workforce are facing increasing challenges. NCF reports provide information from the latest survey results, commentary on the workforce crisis, the Skills for Care State of the Adult Social Care Sector and Workforce in England 2021 Report and Experimental data from the Government about self-funders to highlight some of the key challenges facing the sector.

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This research shows the impact of reduced support from both services and family and friends has had on carers’ health and wellbeing. It demonstrates that without the right interventions there could be more carer breakdown and why the UK Government should increase funding for carers’ breaks, so all carers providing significant hours of care have access to a meaningful break.

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This paper reviews the recommendations of the Independent Review of Adult Social Care and the actions emerging from ‘Coileanadh’ to explore the synergies and areas of opportunity that can help to overcome the implementation gap and articulate the key requirements of a National Care Framework.

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A key priority for Business for Health is the development of an Index to measure contribution of health as a part of a wider process to get ‘Health’ into ESG mandates (ie ‘ESHG’). = The framework will act as the routemap for the development of the Business Index, enabled by our growing ecosystem of members testing out the Index in proof-of-concept pilots and helping companies move to a desired position of creating and improving health.

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In this paper, they share our vision for social care data and share the findings of a series of data forums hosted by Scottish Care involving colleagues from across the social care sector, industry, academia, and government. They articulate the value and potential of social care data and the need to create the right conditions to ensure that its worth can be uncovered and harnessed. They aim to reveal the diamond in data towards a person led vision which creates value for all.

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This report aims to support care providers navigating these challenges, highlighting key insights from our research and offering recommendations for employers and government to create long-term solutions for a thriving workforce – from tackling misconceptions to supporting employee wellbeing.

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The output of phase two of the ‘Collective Care Future’ programme. The visual landscape embodies the contributions of a diverse range of expertise and experiences from providers, staff, people supported, families and wider partners in care and support in Scotland. The findings include eight concepts and three priority areas of focus relating to the overarching philosophy and culture, the policy and partnership enablers, and the way in which change can be enacted in social care practice.

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Social care providers in England have been thrown into the spotlight over the last year as they were hit by Covid-19. But providers of these vital care services are still too often ignored in the increasingly intense discussion around reforming our failing system. This report lays out 10 systemic problems with the way our market for social care operates, and argues that unless they are resolved, funding reforms alone will fail to deliver sustainable change.

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This report summarises the findings from the 2021 Scottish Care Nursing Survey, which was issued in April 2021 to Scottish Care members with nursing provision. Questions were asked around longstanding issues for the sector, such as recruitment and retention, the importance of wellbeing, and what providers would like to see as the future of social care nursing in Scotland.

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Led by Derek Feeley, a former Scottish Government Director General for Health and Social Care and Chief Executive of NHS Scotland. A good deal of public attention to social care support has been recently focused on care homes. They make a number of recommendations specific to the care home sector and, at the same time, it is important to recognise that most social care support is delivered in local communities and in people’s homes.

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January 2021. What does a human right to social care look like? | Scottish Care

This paper seeks to describe what such a human right to social care could look like in practice. It is written at a time of real turmoil and debate about social care in general and specifically the future of adult social care in Scotland.

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January 2021. Manifesto 2021 | Scottish Care

The theme of this manifesto echoes that of the call for a social care covenant, included in the Independent Review for Adult Social Care. They welcome the concept of a social covenant ensuring that everyone can get the social care support they need to live their lives as they choose and to be active citizens.

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November 2020. Lessons and Legacy from the COVID-19 Pandemic in Health and Care | AHSN Network

Collider Health worked with the AHSN Network on a short research study to understand how technology has been an enabler in reducing the care burden and coping with the COVID-19 crisis, and to identify what should be sustained in the ‘new normal’ longer-term. The findings, highlight the importance of treating health as our greatest national asset to nurture and protect, with preventative health requiring more attention in the long-term. Importantly, social care needs to be given the same weighting as to the NHS to accelerate the move towards health and social care integration.

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September 2020. Care home markets in England 2020 | Personal Social Services Research Unit

This report assesses local care home market supply in England. In particular, it offers analysis of the time and spatial dynamics of the supply of care homes and explores the role of Local Authority (LA) expenditure in this market. This report is part of a research project examining regional social care market dynamics.

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October 2020. Caring for Britain – The Alternative Green Paper | Legal & General

August 2020. Scottish Social Service Sector: Report on 2019 Workforce Data | Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC)

The report combines administrative data from the Care Inspectorate with data collected directly from local authorities by the SSSC to form a comprehensive picture of the paid workforce employed in the social service sector in Scotland at the end of 2019. This report provides an overview of the data at a national level and, where possible, also provides data sub-divided by sub-sector or local authority area.

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November 2019 Scottish Government Health and Social Care | Implications of labour markets for the social care workforce

The aim of this study is to better understand the influences that national and local labour markets have on the social care sector, how different parts of the social care sector interact and the implications for workforce planning.

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November 2019. Experience of the Experienced | Scottish Care

This report shares the words of the women and men who work in care homes, care at home and housing support services. This includes their story of dedication and ability, which is making a difference to the lives of some of our most vulnerable citizens. The experience of age, skills, talents and creativity these individuals bring is what is daily transforming the lives of countless people across Scotland today. In every sense it is the experienced who are enabling an experience of dignity, purposefulness and value in the lives of those they care for and support.

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January 2018. Recruitment and retention in adult social care services | The Policy Institute, King's College London

This report presents findings from research in England undertaken in 2017 to inform debates about a possible new government social care workforce strategy.

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November 2017. Fragile Foundations: Exploring the mental health of the social care workforce and the people they support | Scottish Care

This report seeks to describe the experiences of those who work in care at home and care home services and who every day are supporting individuals to live better lives and to overcome the mental stress and distress that crowds in on their living. It shares the voices of a workforce offering dedicated, person-centred care but which is itself struggling to deal with the very real challenges which caring itself brings.

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The report builds understanding of this increasingly important part of the Health-Tech market and is essential reading for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. It shines a spotlight on the challenges within the healthcare sector and how age technology or ‘Age-Tech’ can support an increasing population of older people to live more independent and healthy lives.

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This paper was developed in light of challenges that lockdown and COVID-19 created for engagement / co-production. The paper outlines approaches and techniques to carrying out user engagement and co-production activities where traditional face to face methods aren't possible. With much engagement moving to online delivery, it highlights potential barriers around culture, IT literacy, confidence and trust building and gives examples of how these can be overcome.

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This report is key for solution providers and entrepreneurs to understand how impact investing is evolving post-Covid 19 in the healthy ageing marketplace, and how best to deploy investment specifically for impact investors and social enterprises. Nearly 200 organisations were surveyed spanning traditional investors, venture capital/private equity funds, impact investors, social enterprises and not-for-profit organisations, actively engaged in or considering entering the marketplace for healthy ageing products and services.

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This paper identifies the scale of the opportunity and predicts that the industry will require over 10,000 additional beds per annum over the next decade to meet demand. With many other real estate uses evolving and shrinking in space requirements due to societal changes accelerated by COVID-19, there will be significant opportunities to build more suitable care home developments to meet the growing demands of an ageing population and provide the care that our elders so desperately need.

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Ageing Better is a six-year programme (2015 to 2021) to develop creative ways for people aged over 50 to be actively involved in their local communities, to combat social isolation and loneliness. This paper summaries learning from a detailed review of micro-funding activities on the Ageing Better programme.

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This review is the final instalment of a four-part series examining the state of play for digital services across different branches of adult social care in England. It builds on previous research examining the digital transformation in residential care homes, including by The King’s Fund and Digital Social Care. It recommends incentivising development, uptake of solutions and scaling of beneficial technology.

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This report describes the principles of applying effective design in the healthy ageing market. It’s the culmination of four month learning programme engaging over 200 current, and aspirant, enterprises in the healthy ageing sector.

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This report, commissioned by the Health Foundation, provides a summary of evidence for how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, smartphones, wearable devices and the internet of things are being used within care settings around the world.

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How data, digital and technology can help Scotland recover from Covid-19, transform health & social care and boost our economy. Long-term, strategic investment in health & social care innovation is critical. New and emerging technologies – enabled and underpinned by ethical, robust and secure data – can and should play a vital role in transforming health and social care.

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These stories from around the world showcase a variety of projects that all share the common belief that innovation and fresh thinking can go a long way towards improving the lives of older adults.

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November 2020. Transform Ageing – Supporting people in later life through social entrepreneurship, community and design | Design Council

Transform Ageing, funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, was a pioneering programme taking a community and design-led approach to improve people’s experience of ageing. This report brings together learning shared throughout the programme – with new data from our final evaluation delivered by the Institute for Social Innovation and Impact, University of Northampton – on what worked and what we could do differently in the future.

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