The adult social care workforce in England has grown to 1.49 million workers, according to a new report from Skills for Care.

The latest jump in worker numbers was revealed in Skills for Care’s annual ‘Size and structure of the adult social care sector and workforce in England, 2019’ report, using data from the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) supplied by thousands of employers. In the 2018 edition of the report, it stated the number of adult social care employees was 1.47 million.

The latest report also marked a 22% growth in the total number of adult social care jobs since 2009.

The huge contribution the sector makes to citizen’s wellbeing in our communities is underlined in the report, with an estimated 18,500 organisations now involved in providing or organising adult social care in England. Those services were delivered across an estimated 39,000 establishments deeply embedded in their communities.

The report also showed that around 237,000 adults, older people and carers received direct payments from council’s social services departments in 2017/2018, and it is estimated that approximately 31% of these recipients were employing their own staff.
 
Skills for Care Interim CEO Andy Tilden said: “There is rightly a very live debate about the future of adult social care, and the robust data in this report allows us to make decisions about what future service delivery might look like based on what we know rather than gut feelings.

“The report does once again show the obvious contribution our growing workforce makes supporting people to live the lives they want, but also that our sector is now a key part of our national economy. As we estimate we will need to fill another 580,000 job roles by 2035 that contribution is only going to grow, so we need to start thinking about how that is factored into economic planning locally and nationally.”

To download the ‘Size and structure of the adult social care sector and workforce in England, 2019’ report go to www.skillsforcare.org.uk/sizeandstructure