How will the launch of Skills England impact Social Care Workforce Development?

The Labour government has launched a new body, Skills England, as per its manifesto commitment to put ‘partnership with employers at its heart’.

The current skills landscape is complex and often disjointed, with too few employers engaging with the Further Education (FE) sector leaving many confused and with relatively low levels of understanding about the government’s technical education plans.

Social Care training landscape

The Department for Education estimates that skills shortages across the country have doubled between 2017-2020. In social care, Skills for Care’s latest workforce data sets make for grim reading with a continued shortage of staff and increased reliance on overseas recruitment.

The current landscape for training, qualifications and funding is complex and fragmented and cuts across multiple departments, arms-length bodies and sector-based councils including the Department for Education (DFE), the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Skills for Care working alongside a myriad of highly focused employer-led organisations such as the Outstanding Care Society and Digital Care Hub to name just a couple.

The previous government’s focus on Apprenticeships (often to the detriment of standalone qualifications) has been fraught with difficulty, with year-on-year declines across enrolments and with around 200 colleges and providers withdrawing from the provision. The net result can be seen in the £2.6bn of levy funds that simply ‘expired’ and went unspent between 2020-22.

It all feels a bit of a mess!

Step forward Skills England

Skills England has been created to bring together central and local government, businesses, training providers and trade unions to meet the skills needs for the next decade.

The Skills England Bill, which was announced in the King’s Speech last week, will initially transfer functions from the Institutes for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to Skills England.

The new body will continue to be established over the next 12 months and will also identify the training for which the government’s ‘Growth and Skills Levy’ (which is the new name for the Apprenticeship Levy) will be accessible, giving employers more flexibility to spend levy funds on the training they actually need.

There is also the murmurs that the list of levy-eligible training will include training provided in-house by employers which could also form part of the ‘off-the-job’ training requirements for apprenticeships. We will have to wait to see if this fully materialises.

Further devolution

Labour has also committed to further regional devolution of responsibilities for local skills development and investment. Whilst this may well provide some regional flexibility, we note that previous devolution has often created barriers for national employers who find it almost impossible to create standardised and integrated pathways. They are often forced to engage with multiple education and training providers who operate within tightly controlled regions and frequently offer different pathways and eligibility criteria.

Future role of Skills for Care

Whilst there has been no specific reference to the future role of Skills for Care within the Skills England plans, some of the current 25 sector skills councils may well find their role, responsibility and perhaps even their longer-term existence subject to change as more details emerge.  In the meantime, given the size of the task ahead, it’s likely that the  Workforce Strategy recently launched by Skills for Care (working with DHSC) will be implemented for the most part.

So, employers would be well advised to plan for the following:

1. Continued rollout of the new Care Workforce Pathways with the next stage focusing on registered managers, deputy managers and personal assistants.
2. The renewed focus on the new Level 2 Adult Social Care Certificate qualification.
3. The new Care Certificate Qualification will become the benchmark for the sector, and employers will be expected to ensure at least 80% of new staff achieve the qualification within the next 5 years.
4. More emphasis on ‘digital skills’ including the Digital Skills pathways and the new Level 5 Digital Leadership qualification.
5. The ambition for all employees to develop level 3 competency within 3 years of working within the sector.
6. A greater opportunity to access a wider range of funding streams including more flexibility around the Apprenticeship Levy with perhaps up to 50% of the levy being used to support other approved training and qualifications.
7. Replacing the existing Workforce Development Fund with a new Adult Social Care Training and Development Fund which will be accessed via a new employer’s online digital account.
8. More opportunities to deliver training and qualifications using in-house teams and recognition of the existing skills, knowledge and experience already embedded within the sector.
9. Greater awareness and access to both local skills improvement plans (LSIP) and local skills improvement funds (LSIF) which were launched in 2023 to enable employers, education and training providers and other stakeholders to drive change at a local level. This should be viewed alongside a greater drive towards further devolution.
10. Greater scrutiny from Care Quality Commission (CQC) on what good learning and development looks like.

Whilst change is always inevitable, the current landscape is particularly volatile and employers need to maintain a forward-looking strategic view of the opportunities and challenges they will face if they are to take advantage of the opportunities that lie ahead.

For our part, EdgeWorks has worked at the intersection of training, qualifications and funding for over a decade, helping employers stay ahead of the curve by ‘joining the dots’ and providing insightful commentary.

If you would like to find out how we are helping our clients prepare for the challenges ahead via our unique Employer-Led delivery model, then feel free to book a short Discovery Call where we will share with you details of how you can prepare to deliver the new Level 2 Adult Social Care Certificate qualification in-house using your own team.