Up to 627,000 extra social care staff will be needed to improve services and meet need by 2031, according to a report by the Health Foundation.
The Health Foundation’s REAL Centre found a 53 per cent growth in the social care workforce is required in the next decade – four times greater than the increases of the previous ten years.
Social care will need to see funding rise more quickly than the NHS, sharply reversing a trend over the last decade where NHS spending increased by 20 per cent and social care spending did not grow.
The growing demands on social care implies an additional funding requirement of £8.9bn and £14.4bn in 2030-31 on 2019-20 levels in the report’s stabilisation and recovery scenarios respectively.
The projected gap in the workforce is in addition to current social care vacancies of 112,000.
The Health Foundation has highlighted that given the time it takes to train new staff and trends in funding for workforce education and training, the findings call into question the extent to which it will be possible to meet growing demand for care and address the backlog of care over the next decade without a significant boost for workforce training in the government’s spending review.
“Despite the more immediate challenges posed by Covid-19, the government must not lose sight of the underlying demand and cost pressures facing the NHS and social care over the long term and the need to plan better to increase the workforce to meet this demand,” said Health Foundation director of research and REAL Centre Anita Charlesworth (pictured).
“The money needed to meet pressures in health and social care will need to rise significantly beyond the current settlement, and at an even faster rate in social care. This means the government faces a major balancing act of priorities in the coming decade,” she added.
“A comprehensive, fully-funded workforce plan should be the top priority for government. Without it our health and social care service will be unable to keep up with demand, and care will fall well short of standards in other Western European nations.”
