2nd November 2007 WCVA
Baltic House
Mount Stuart Square
Cardiff
CF10 5FH

Wales Council for Voluntary Action

A response to the Health, Wellbeing and Local Government Committee Inquiry into Health and Social Care Workforce Planning

Introduction to WCVA

Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA) represents the interests of voluntary organisations, community groups and volunteers in Wales.  It has 1,800 organisations in direct membership and is in contact with many more through national and regional networks. WCVA’s mission is to strengthen voluntary and community action at the heart of a civil society in Wales that:

• is inclusive and offers equality of opportunity;
• empowers people to participate and fosters community leadership;
• encourages and promotes the independence of voluntary action;
• celebrates and reflects linguistic and cultural diversity and choice, and
• engages in genuine partnership with other sectors on a "who does what best” basis.

Background

The voluntary sector is a significant employer in Wales with over 30,000 employees and over 5,000 trainees.  The sector is very diverse, ranging from large UK wide registered charities to small local community groups and services.   It has an increasingly important contribution to make to health, social care and well-being, especially its ability to involve and engage directly with citizens, service users and carers.  It contributes directly to formal health and social service provision, but also has a critical role to play in all aspects of public health and the broader promotion of well-being.   This response is compiled from responses from national voluntary organizations, local health and social care facilitators and WCVA staff.  Those facilitators who responded (5 out of 22) are all involved in their local Social Care Workforce Development Partnerships.

Changing environment and the impact on the workforce

Demographic and social changes means there will be a need for an increased health and social care workforce.  Health and social care policy is focused towards maintaining health and well-being, preventing ill health, maintaining independence and providing user-centred support as close to home as possible.  Increased expectations of service users and carers means that more demands will be made of the workforce which will need to be flexible, innovative and responsive.  The role of new technology is leading to new types of jobs or re-configurations of old jobs.   Their training and qualification needs and pathways will need to be addressed. There is an increased focus on identifying improved outcomes for users and carers, including quality of life issues.  In order to achieve these improved outcomes, staff will need to be trained to be more outcome focussed, rather than output focussed.  Organisations will need to establish reporting mechanisms that capture this information.  Reporting targets and performance indicators are too often output focussed and statistically driven and these will need to change to reflect the variety of benefits and outcomes achieved. There is a need for more proactive rather than reactive workforce planning in order to effectively address future health and social care requirements to meet the needs of those in need of services and support. The "one sector” approach to workforce matters needs to be reflected by consistency in pay, conditions, and access to training and development - across all sectors and at all levels. There needs to be wider access to training, events and conferences, including more affordable fees for voluntary sector organisations.  There also needs to be wider, more effective and proactive promotion and communication of training opportunities. There is a need for users and carers to be involved in decisions regarding the staff mix required in multi-disciplinary teams and also in staff recruitment and training - sharing their experiences and expertise.

Workforce development issues

A whole systems approach to training and development is needed, especially in relation to core/mandatory training aspects. There is a need to ensure that the voluntary sector have the capacity to develop their workforce - for example, staff having time to do training and development and also to offer this as coaches/mentors.  This needs to be specifically funded and needs to be built within funding applications as good practice. Diverse and innovative methods of skills development and training, reflecting the needs of voluntary organisations, need to be developed.  Training needs to be offered in bite-size chunks to enable organisations, especially smaller ones, to support their staff development.  Training is not always about courses and formal learning, but can be on the job/action learning or through shadowing, coaching or mentoring.  Whichever methods are used there will still be a need to plan and budget for this. The diversity of voluntary sector organisations means they don’t easily link into any one Sector Skills Council (SSC).  It needs to be identified how the voluntary sector will have access to courses for their workforce which meet both organisational and individual needs, and relevant standards will need to be developed.   The work of all the SSC’s will need to be co-ordinated to ensure that all sectors benefit from the improvements to skills infrastructure and delivery.

Resource and capacity issues

If the voluntary sector is to be more involved in the whole range of partnerships and groups, including on workforce planning and development, then they need to be funded to be able to do so. The recruitment and retention of staff is a key issue and there is a need to streamline the processes for CRB checks. There is a need for social care workforce planning and development to be more fully addressed and for this to be more efficient and more accessible and relevant to the voluntary sector.  Improved access and increased opportunities for providers and umbrella bodies to engage with the SSC’s on workforce planning issues is needed. The effective involvement of the voluntary sector in local Social Care Workforce Development Partnerships and regional Social Care Partnerships needs to be universal and consistent.   There is a need for robust monitoring on this and compliance measures to be put in place.

Other issues

There is a need to recognize and support the full range of needs of culturally diverse citizens, including a wide range of minority language requirements.  This is relevant both to staff who can’t speak English, or have limited English, and to patients, users and carers who have limited English.  There is also the issue of effective safeguarding and vetting procedures as they relate to overseas recruited and migrant workers. There are issues regarding short term funding for projects and the need to continually develop new and innovative ideas instead of consolidating best practice and continuing schemes which have proved their worth and been valued within communities.   Funding is increasingly concentrated on national organisations with smaller, local ones struggling. There is a lack of strategic dimension to training provision.   There are concerns around the introduction of generic health and social care staff.  For example, potential staff could be put off by additional health related responsibilities and there is a potential re-medicalisation of social care. There is an unresolved issue about sleep-overs and the European Working Time Directive. Further Education social care courses need to be suitable and relevant for potential front line social care staff.  There needs to be more focus given to developing and training generic social care staff in the broadest sense, not just social workers. There is a need for the range of social care service providers to be able to access training as they could be potential commissioned providers and this would equip them to enter the commissioning market. CS/WCVA/2^nd November 2007