Dr Maddy Thompson from Urban Foresight recently led research looking at challenges in attracting and recruiting social care and child care workers in Wales. Here, she talks about what this research found and why it’s important.
Social care and child care workers fulfil an important role in society. They support individuals with a wide range of needs and help people to live healthy, fulfilling lives.
However, long-term challenges in attraction and recruitment in the sector have got worse in recent years. There aren't enough people willing to work in social care and child care roles. This means the sector is undergoing a ‘workforce crisis’.
Social Care Wales set up WeCare Wales in 2019 to ease some of the workforce pressures faced in Wales. WeCare Wales aims to raise the profile of the sector and make it more attractive to jobseekers.
It does so by running local and national campaigns, developing online resources, advertising vacancies and providing support to jobseekers and employers.
In late 2022, Social Care Wales commissioned our team at Urban Foresight to conduct research to better understand the attraction and recruitment crisis in the social care and child care sector in Wales.
In mid-2023, Social Care Wales asked us to add to this research by exploring what’s known about the preferences and practices of job-seekers – people looking for new jobs. In all, we conducted research across four main areas:
When conducting our research, we spoke with 52 social care and child care providers and employers and a further 13 people from five supporting services.
We also reviewed literature and reports and spent time looking at messages in forums where job-seekers often go to for advice.
We found that the challenges faced by social care and child care employers in Wales are largely similar to challenges faced by the sector in other parts of the world.
Things such as low pay, low status, the responsibility involved in these roles, and the long hours, all stop people from wanting to join the sector. These are all challenges internal to the social care and child care sector.
However, some things are beyond the sector’s control – Brexit, COVID-19, the cost-of-living crisis and changes to the UK’s economy all affect how willing people are to work in social care and child care roles.
For example, we kept hearing that employers are competing with supermarkets to attract staff. Job-seekers are more drawn to supermarkets as hours are often more predictable and workers get better incentives such as discounts on their food shopping and higher wages.
While lots of challenges were highlighted, we also found out that it’s not all bad. Some people are really passionate about working in the sector, and some employers are doing fantastic things to bring them in. There are lots of important lessons that other employers should consider.
We found that across the country, employers and care providers were producing creative responses to the challenge. Some examples of their initiatives which are working are listed below:
WeCare Wales is viewed as a positive force for the sector overall. In particular, the Introduction to Social Care course has been popular. It raises awareness of the sector and prepares potential applicants for the type of work involved.
The campaign videos produced by WeCare Wales that show a typical day or moment in care have had a large reach, with the ‘We Care Will You?’ video having over 330,000 views on YouTube.
WeCare Wales also facilitates a wide-ranging programme of outreach and engagement activities. For example, regional care career connectors connect providers with schools and job centres across Wales.
WeCare Wales also develops resources for employers such as stakeholder toolkits that support them in their own recruitment activities.
There are some ways that WeCare Wales can adapt to better support the sector. This includes:
Our research also highlighted that many of the challenges the sector faces are beyond the ability of employers or even Social Care Wales to change.
To ensure Wales has a sustainable social care and child care sector moving forwards, system-level changes are needed. This could include:
Read the report and access the resources for employers:
Understanding attraction, recruitment and job-seeking behaviours - reports and resources
Principal Consultant - Urban Foresight