Staff experiences in social care
In health and social care, there is a growing understanding of the link between workforce experience and outcomes for patients and people who draw on care and support – not just in terms of their own experiences of care but in multiple quality measures including clinical outcomes.
The NHS measures the experience of its workforce each year through the NHS Staff Survey. In social care, there is no equivalent. So, in summer 2021, when the Health and Social Care Committee highlighted that 44% of staff in NHS acute and community health organisations had reported work-related stress, it could not offer comparable figures for social care.
One of the recommendations from that report was to extend the NHS Staff Survey into social care. The aim would be to fill the information gap around the experiences of the adult social care workforce nationally, providing data comparable to that available for the NHS. But is this what is needed, and would it be workable? We put those questions to the sector itself, through a roundtable discussion focusing mainly on care homes and home-based care for older people. This briefing summarises the themes that arose on the day.
This report was shared in a news release to social care media.
