Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he plans to take to improve the recruitment and retention of care assistants in (a) nursing and (b) residential homes.
The Department continues to work with our delivery partner, Skills for Care, to encourage recruitment into the sector, and to provide multiple entry points and attractive career pathways.
The Department is also working to improve the domestic supply of nurses. This includes the development of new routes into nursing such as the new Nursing Associate role and the Nursing Degree Apprenticeship. The new Nursing Degree Apprenticeship once established could result in up to 1,000 domestic apprentice nurses each year.