Adult Social Care: Long-term Workforce Plan

Lord Turnberg Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I can give that assurance to the noble Lord, and I am glad he has identified to your Lordships’ House the wide range of circumstances in which the workforce might be. For the benefit of your Lordships’ House, I should add that, in their manifesto, the Government made a commitment to

“ensure the publication of regular, independent workforce planning, across health and social care”.

We are currently developing advice on the options about how to fulfil this commitment for adult social care, which will take account of the point the noble Lord made.

[Lord Turnberg (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the major problems is that most care workers are employed by privately owned care homes, both large and small. Many of these employees are on zero-hour contracts—it is a mess. How does one ensure that we have a national workforce plan if we have all these workers in various organisations? We must bring them all together and have a centrally regulated qualification that is nationally recognised. I hope I am not boring my noble friend by asking the same question: when are we going to get a nationally recognised qualification and registration?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My noble friend is never boring and certainly does not bore this Minister. I very much take the point about the difference between the social care workforce and the NHS workforce, because the majority of the jobs in social care, as my noble friend says, are in the independent sector and the Department of Health and Social Care does not have the levers to ensure a development pipeline. However, this is a challenge for us to meet, not something to turn away from: it is a matter of working across the whole of the workforce, no matter where they are from.

On professionalisation, I agree that we need to enhance skills, because care needs to be of the right quality. I mentioned earlier the development of the care workforce pathway, which is a new career structure, and also that the level 2 adult social care certificate qualification has been confirmed.