The Care Quality Commission looks at the challenges facing provides and employers
In our recent ‘State of Care’ report, the Care Quality Commission highlighted that the health and care system is gridlocked and unable to operate effectively.
The report shows that one of the challenges adult social care providers face is around workforce.
Every good employer wants to support its workforce to feel valued, involved and able to thrive, knowing they are empowered and enabled to make a difference through their work.
We believe some of the foundations for achieving this are staff wellbeing, workforce planning, positive and inclusive leadership, and culture.
Our new ‘single assessment framework’ – the basis for our assessments of all registered providers, local authorities and integrated care systems, happening from 2023 – uses a set of ‘quality statements’., setting out what high-quality, person-centred care looks like and what people should expect from providers, commissioners and system leaders.
We will be seeking to improve how we hear from staff, as well as from people who use services. This will be invaluable evidence to help us assess individual providers and local systems more widely.
There are also specific quality statements on workforce within our new framework. For example, when we look at whether a service is safe, we’ll include a quality statement on safe and effective staffing.
We’ll expect providers to demonstrate how they make sure there are enough qualified, skilled and experienced people, who receive effective support, supervision and development to provide safe care that meets people’s individual needs.
“Every good employer wants to support its workforce”
Another example is, when we explore how caring a service is, we’ll include a specific quality statement on workforce wellbeing and enablement.
Our teams will be looking at how a provider demonstrates that they care about and promote the wellbeing of their staff, supporting them to always deliver person-centred care.
We hope providers will be encouraged to think about their workforce and how best to support not only their professional development, but also their health and wellbeing.
In local authority assessments, we will consider how the authority understands the needs of the local population, how it ensures people have access to a diverse range of safe, effective, high-quality support options to meet their care and support needs, and how it supports services to be sustainable, affordable and provide continuity for people.
In doing this, we will consider how the local authority understands its current and future workforce needs and how it works in partnership with care providers, including personal assistants and other agencies, to develop, support and promote a capable and effective workforce.
We’ll use available data from our assessments of providers in the local area, including scores on safe staffing and workforce wellbeing, to help shape and inform our conversations with the local authority.
We’ll be interested in how they develop, support and promote a capable and effective workforce in order to deliver care provision, integration and continuity.
In addition, we’ll explore other issues that impact on how the local authority workforce – including social workers, occupational therapists and others – feel about where they work.
These include things such as whether there’s a stable leadership team with clear roles and accountabilities; whether equality, human rights and diversity principles are embedded throughout the values, cultures and leadership behaviours; and how leadership gets feedback from staff – and learns from it to inform their strategy, areas for improvement, and decision-making.
Health check for social care professionals
‘The standards for employers of social workers in England’, developed by the sector and hosted by the LGA, set out the key components of ‘whole systems’ approaches to supporting social workers and the shared core expectations of employers.
They can help to improve recruitment and retention by providing the right conditions for social workers and other key professionals, such as occupational therapists, to thrive.
The eight standards include effective workforce planning, safe workloads and case allocation, wellbeing, continuing professional development, and strategic partnerships.
Councils can use the standards to help develop a working environment where social work practice and social workers can flourish, in turn supporting recruitment and retention and enhancing their own reputation as a service provider and employer.
Each year, the LGA surveys thousands of social workers in an annual ‘health check’, to find out what they think about their working environment, what factors influence them to remain engaged with their work and to stay with their organisations, and how well employers are delivering the standards.
This year’s survey is open now until the end of January 2023, so please ensure your council emails the LGA at [email protected] to sign up for it, and encourage your registered social workers, mental health practitioners, occupational therapists and social care teams to take part.
The LGA will give you an anonymised breakdown of your council’s results, providing invaluable local information that can inform your improvement work and help you plan and manage recruitment and retention, staff morale, training needs and other issues.
As well as offering a way for you to assess and review your council’s social work performance against the standards, the results will also help support the LGA’s lobbying work.