Home care growing rapidly in 2021

According to The size and structure of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ report, published by Skills for Care in July 2021, non-residential social care services increased by 7% from 2019/20 to 2020/21 – more than any other part of the sector.

The figures paint an interesting picture, especially when looking at the comparison to those in the residential services sector. In particular, the number of jobs in domiciliary services increased at a faster rate between 2012/13 and 2020/21 (an increase of 135,000 jobs and 22%) than jobs in residential services (an increase of 25,000 jobs and 4%).  

Why is there such a difference?

In 2019, the Chief Executive of the CQC, Ian Trenholm, suggested a theory that there was a reduction in residential care as people were being maintained in their homes for longer.

This suggests that people are planning to age in place, staying in their homes and maintaining their independence for longer – albeit with the help of domiciliary care workers. 

Did Covid-19 have an impact on the sector?

While the non-residential social care sector saw an increase of about 40,000 jobs between 2019/20 and 2020/21 it is difficult to conclude whether this was strictly due to the pandemic, or simply a sign of increasing demand for home-based care.

When compared to the home care sector, which saw the number of jobs remaining broadly the same over the period, something does seem to have changed in the domiciliary care sector. 

In October 2020 home care worker Jo Da Silva told MPs that her job had changed dramatically since Covid-19. With extra visits happening due to health issues amongst home care clients and “extra duties” undertaken by staff because clients’ family members were shielding. 

What does the future look like?

If the adult social care workforce grows proportionally to the projected number of people aged 65 and over in the population, then the number of adult social care jobs will increase by 29% (480,000 jobs) to around 2.16 million jobs by 2035.

The figures also show that since 2012/13, the care workforce has continued to shift away from local authority jobs (a decrease of 24%, or 37,000 jobs) and towards independent sector jobs (an increase of 16%, or 180,000 jobs).

How can care home providers utilise data from Skills for Care?

The Adult Social Care (ASC) Workforce Data Set is an online data collection service and the leading source of workforce information for the adult social care sector in England. The data provided is used by Skills for Care to create reports like ‘The size and structure of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’.

Benefits of having an ASC-WDS account

As well as providing crucial data that informs policy decisions, care providers and registered managers can:

  • Store and access key information about staff in one place 
  • Access the Workforce Development Fund (WDF)
  • Use it as a record of training and qualifications data  
  • Understand how your business is performing with benchmarking functionality

One provided said of the service: “The benchmarks functionality within the system allows us to compare what our competitors are paying, their sickness levels, and turnover. This also gave us a good starting point when evaluating the rate of pay for apprentices and staff under the age of 19.”

Whatever the cause for the dramatic increase in growth for domiciliary care, it’s an exciting time for the sector. With the incoming changes to the way the CQC regulates and inspects, to the adoption of AI in care technology in dom care, whatever challenges the sector faces – Unique:IQ are here to provide solutions.