Managers play a crucial role in social care. You’re not only responsible for those that your staff care for, but also directly influencing the quality of care that people receive. That’s a big job.
We know it’s been a real struggle over the last few years, but with access to all the resources and support from across the social care partnership, there’s more out there to help you and your staff than ever before.
In this section you’ll find:
- Recruitment support and examples of best practice
- Retention support and examples of best practice
- Professional development opportunities for you and pots of funding for staff training
- Wellbeing support in addition to the support our staff can find in the staff pages and the wellbeing pages
- Support to go digital and innovate and examples of best practice
- Other helpful resources and links
Also don’t forget to Nominate your colleagues to be on our showcase of fantastic care across Staffordshire.
Recruitment resources
Recruiting the right staff is one of the hardest jobs to do in today’s climate. The Staffordshire Social Care Workforce Partnership is making a huge difference.
Here’s some great tips from Skills For Care and Care Friends that were presented at the launch of the strategy in April 2023.
New for Autumn 2023, Government has launched a new phase of their Made with Care national recruitment campaign. Their campaign guide includes links to downloadable and printable resources, but also good instructions on how to use them. There are some handy tips on how to use your social media channels to find new applicants too.
Retaining staff
Retaining our staff is one of the most important things we can all do, and there’s many things that add up to healthy, happy staff that stay with you in their vocation for as long as possible.
Recruitment takes precious time and resources and having high staff turnover can make it harder to attract new people. It is worth investing in staff retention and paying attention to the different factors that can affect it – including pay, working hours, working culture, environment, career paths, and having line managers who can effectively engage their teams.
You can find some great tips and resources from Skills for Care. Read top tips for adult social care workforce retention.
Best practice examples and advice in retaining staff
Funding
- Workforce Development Fund - Adult social care employers can claim money from the Workforce Development Fund towards the cost of workers completing a broad range of adult social care qualifications, learning programmes and digital learning modules. The Workforce Development Fund (WDF) is funding from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) disseminated by Skills for Care. To claim funding an organisation must provide an adult social care service and directly employ care staff within England
Supporting your health and wellbeing is really essential, and is one of the highest priorities of the social care workforce partnership across Staffordshire.
Looking after you and your staff
In addition to the health and wellbeing support and financial wellness support available to all social care staff, this page outlines the local and national support available to you as managers, leaders and supervisors.
Skills for Care support for manager wellbeing resources include:
- Supporting Leaders (793 KB) - Help and advice and how to support yourself and others as leaders from Skills for Care- Presented at the launch of the Staffordshire Social Care Workforce Strategy in 2023.
- Chat with registered managers – advice line, Facebooks groups, WhatsApp groups and more
- Skills for Care guide for nominated individuals - Skills for Care has developed a new comprehensive guide aimed at nominated individuals, which provides practical advice and signposts to other resources and support available to help you. It considers key aspects of your role and shares top tips, so you continue to provide high-quality, person-centred care to the people you support.
Going digital and innovating
Embracing more digital technology helps social care in many ways, including:
- improving the quality of care
- being transparent and accountable
- supporting individuals to be as independent as possible for longer
- improving the quality and efficiency of information sharing between health and social care.
Latest support from Digital Social Care
Resources from Skills for Care
Digital Skills Framework
This free resource helps to support the development of digital skills across the adult social care workforce. It can be used by employers to help with planning staff training or by individuals for their personal development.
The framework supports the government commitment in Next Steps to Put People at the Heart of Care to provide a ‘comprehensive digital learning offer’ for the adult social care sector.
Find out more about the framework
Digital Leadership Programme
This four-day virtual programme for registered managers and deputy managers of adult social care services is designed to build digital confidence and ability. It will help develop managers into digital leaders and will equip them with the insight to identify and embed digital technology in the delivery of care and support.
Find out more about the programme
Assistive Technology support from Happy at Home
Tell us your great news
It’s about time that social care is properly recognised and valued. You and your staff do amazing things. So tell us about them so we can them with colleagues and the world, so we can help others understand what it’s all about.
So if you’ve got good news to share, fill in this template with just a few details ( should take no more than five minutes), email it to clare.abbotts@staffordshire.gov.uk and we’ll be in touch!
Here’s just some of the people that we’ve already showcased. Watch their stories
Promoting your work and the workforce partnership
We have developed a brand that accompanies the workforce strategy and can also be used by partners.
Find out more about using the Staffordshire Social Care Workforce branding to help your organisation