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How workforce data helps us make better decisions about care

14 Oct 2024

8 min read

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  • ASC-WDS

We hear from some important voices across the sector on the vital nature of workforce data and how it helps us make better decisions that leads to higher quality care and support.

Collecting and analysing workforce data through tools such as our Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) is what enables us to offer valuable insight, such as that provided by our annual ‘State of’ and ‘Size and structure’ reports.

We wanted to hear from some of the most influential voices across our sector on why and how they believe workforce data helps better decisions be made in adult social care.

Dr Anna Severwright – social care activist

Dr Anna Severwright is a Leicester based disability rights campaigner and former advisor to the House of Lords Adult Social Care Committee who was recently awarded an OBE for her services to disabled and older people.

Anna uses her experience of receiving support and living with a disability to offer some great insight into the importance of workforce data:

The people who work in social care are vital to people like me, who draw on social care, to be able to live our lives. I employ PAs which means I can work, socialise and also do the boring things like empty the bins! This data is important to be able to spot trends and should enable policy makers to identify where they need to make changes to ensure that there are enough people working in social care and that they enjoy their roles and stay in what can be rewarding roles.

Melanie Williams - Nottinghamshire County Council

Melanie Williams, Executive Director of Adult Social Care at Nottinghamshire County Council, commented on the essential nature of workforce data to her organisation in trying to understand the structure of the 35,000 strong care workforce in their region:

Workforce data has underpinned our workforce strategies in Nottinghamshire, and we are constantly seeking to improve it. We work to understand both our internal workforce (about 1,800 people) and our wider care workforce of around 35,000 people. This helps us understand how well we are recruiting, how we need to change the way we work, the impact of our retention activities, and where we need to invest development time.

A really important area for us is in Equality Diversity and Inclusion. We have very poor data so we have worked hard to encourage the workforce to report their personal information, to refine our systems to understand it better, and through being a Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) pilot, work to act on the insight the data gives us. Advancing equalities is a priority and we have a long way to go, but our starting place has been in working to improve data quality and regularly looking at this, and then with the workforce, making sense of where we are and what action we need to take. Alongside qualitative feedback we get from wellbeing surveys and the annual health check, workforce data is crucial in understanding the impact of the measure we put into place to develop and grow our workforce.

Deborah Rozansky – Social Care Institute for Excellence

Deborah Rozansky, Director of Policy, Research and Information at the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) gave us some excellent insight into how their organisation uses workforce data.

Deborah said:

Social care workforce data provides critical intelligence for the whole of the social care ecosystem. At SCIE, we have used the data in three ways:

1) For research studies about the workforce, such as how best to meet the skills and training needs of frontline care workers.

2) For policy development, such as demonstrating how workforce investment helps tackle gaps in care access and provision – and raise standards of care.

3) For practice improvement, from improving local commissioning to designing services that better meet people’s care needs.

Liz Jones – National Care Forum

Liz Jones, Policy Director at National Care Forum, commented on how ²»Á¼Ñо¿Ëù’s ASC-WDS, and the workforce insights it enables, provides much needed insight to the structure of the sectors 1.59m workforce.

Liz said:

The Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set provides vital insights into the social care workforce annually and the picture over time with hugely valuable trends data. Given that the social care sector employs 1.6m people across the country and needs to recruit many more in future years, this [ASC-WDS] data is more important than ever and is the most comprehensive workforce data set that we have. From a policy and influencing perspective, this data set offers invaluable in terms of intelligence and from an individual provider perspective, it offers benchmarking insights in terms of key workforce metrics around pay, turnover, absence.

Professor Martin Green – Care England

Professor Martin Green, Chief Executive Officer of Care England, shared his view on what makes workforce data essential and why ²»Á¼Ñо¿Ëù’s ASC-WDS data helps put forward a convincing argument for the future of adult social care.

We are fortunate in social care to have some good data that is provided by ²»Á¼Ñо¿Ëù, so our views on the workforce issues are based in data analysis, rather than opinions. This gives much more strength to argument and makes our assertions on what is needed to secure the future of social care, irrefutable

Kathy Roberts - Association of Mental Health Providers

Kathy Roberts MBE, CEO of the Association of Mental Health Providers, uses data to outline some of the challenges our sector faces and how they are using this data to help build a more sustainable sector:

Workforce data is essential in addressing the increasing demand for mental health services across England. With more than 8 million individuals engaged with mental health charities across England and 1.2 million individuals waiting to access care, understanding the workforce landscape is critical for strategic planning. Last year 23/24 ²»Á¼Ñо¿Ëù report shows a workforce of 565,000 in mental health social care, yet with 1 in 8 jobs unfilled. At the Association we use the data within our interactive workforce map identifying service gaps, supporting commissioners in making informed decisions, and advocating for much-needed funding to build a sustainable workforce.

The latest version of our ‘The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ report can be found here. You can find out more about how you can contribute to ASC-WDS by visiting our hub page.

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Leeds City Council’s SC-WRES journey

Thank you for contributing to our ‘State of’ report for 2024