Skills for Care (2019), the strategic workforce development and planning body for adult social care in England, has stated that an estimated 18 500 separate organisations employing a total of 1.49 million people are involved in providing or organising adult social care across England. Dodsworth and Oung (2023) reported that, across the four countries of the UK, there are shared challenges around recruitment and retention of the workforce, linked to poor pay and conditions and perceptions of the attractiveness of the sector.
Skills for Care summarised the role of the registered nurse in social care as enjoying:
‘… high levels of professional autonomy and responsibility. This supports confident and innovative practice together with strong clinical decision-making. The multi-faceted nature of their role means they also develop a wide range of transferable expertise with the need to be flexible, resourceful, and creative in finding solutions to short, medium- and longer-term care and business needs.’
In their long-term workforce plans, all four of the UK countries' governments have made commitments to supporting the social care workforce – the Welsh Government (2023) shared a commitment that £730 000 had been made available to Health Education Improvement Wales to fund an innovative three-year pilot establishing a Care Home Education Facilitator (CHEF) network in Wales, aiming to support the recruitment of registered nurses to work in care homes. By exposing student nurses to a wider breadth of high-quality practice placements in social care, it is hoped that newly qualified nurses will consider the sector as a career option.
Northern Ireland has recognised the potential opportunities to advertise health and social care services more effectively, and raise awareness among young people, for example by offering more volunteering and work experience placements to those at GCSE level (Department of Health, 2016).
The NHS England NHS Long Term Workforce Plan (2023) recognised the workforce shortages in social care and stated that it anticipates that as Integrated Care Systems become more involved in education and training planning, the ability to develop more opportunities in social care will be realised by extending the provision of practice placements to give students valuable experience in the delivery of care outside hospitals and introduce them to wider career opportunities.
Advantages
NHS England, in recognising that ‘lived experience’ is critical to understanding what it means to be a social care nurse and take full advantage of the opportunities offered by this amazing profession, has stated that undergraduate placements, across a variety of care settings, are the best way to create the next generation by delivering practice placements for undergraduate nurses.
To support the implementation of this, Skills for Care (2023) has introduced new guidance to support developing nursing placement opportunities in social care.
The guide covers all of the areas that need to be considered, including stakeholder engagement, tariff payments, and relevant regulatory requirements from the Nursing and Midwifery Council such as clarification around the roles of academic and practice assessor supervision for student nurses.
One lovely quote from a student nurse, on placement in a nursing home, sums up the opportunities that await:
‘Before coming on placement, I had a lot of reservations about social care and saw this as “just” nursing home care, I was under the impression that there was not much range for learning, and I felt proficiencies would be difficult to achieve. But I can certainly say now that all of that is not the case and I've had my mind completely changed. Social care is a vital part of the nursing field, it is flexible, valuable, and most importantly the front line to supporting individuals within our communities in a safe and homely environment. Without social care, there would be many individuals who would struggle at home and wouldn't be able to receive personalised care to the extent they can in social care settings.’
It is critical for the health and care of our population that we deliver programmes of nursing education that consider all environments where the public are receiving care. This Skills for Care (2023) guide is a fantastic resource to support colleagues towards expanding career opportunities in the social care sector.