To: Clerk of Committee

Age Concern Swansea’s Submission of Evidence to Health, Well Being and Local Government Committee Enquiry, on Health and Social Care Workforce Planning.

Background

Age Concern Swansea is an Independent Local Charity only for City and County of Swansea, raising and spending nearly a Million pounds every year on over 9,500 older people, with 50 staff and 150 volunteers. We work in partnership with Statutory and other Agencies to deliver services and support, also inform on issues for future planning.

The needs of the Voluntary Sector must be recognised as we are expected now to be part of Public Service Delivery and are seen as the 3^rd Sector tendering for contracts.

Therefore the major issues for the Sector are:

1. Staff recruitment, employment, training, retention etc take approximately 70% of our budget and management time and need Senior Core Staff to manage.  If this isn’t done well we cannot deliver quality services.  Problem is lack of core funding for Senior Management Staff.  We do full cost recovery on grants etc, but it is not enough.  

Human Resources Management is a major problem for us, we have to employ a Senior Manager to support 50 staff and deal withal operational issues, and a very expensive External Advisor at huge cost.

2. Our organisations role has changed and staff are now doing work at Social Worker level due to (1) heightening of eligibility criteria in Social Services and the huge change of role of Social Workers who now are mostly budget managers and assessors of clients needs.

Problem is we cannot pay appropriate salary to attract/employ trained and skilled staff so training is essential and often expensive and time consuming.

3. Short term funding leads to short term contracts for staff and poor continuity and quality of service.  Our experience since 1990 clearly identifies the value longer term funding has on services/staff e.g. Hospital Discharge and Supporting People Projects have gained enormous strength and quality as they are long term funded.  Others equally vital e.g. Advice/Information and Welfare Benefits have a very stop/start fragmented history with a very mixed service, not always able to meet clients needs.

4. Joint Working/Planning and Partnership

We are trying to integrate into our local Partnerships.  This is working extremely well on some levels e.g. Age Concern Swansea employ 2 Nurses a Podiatrist and a Social Worker who keep their professional development up to date through links with NHS Trust and Local Authority.  However we see a major need to develop shared training, which would bring great benefits in staff of different agencies learning to trust each other.

Closer more open planning on changes via impact assessment on other agencies.  

In Social Care there has to be integrated planning to manage scarce resources, this is not happening to the detriment of services to vulnerable people.

We are invited to the Social Care Workforce Meetings but usually can’t attend due to other priorities.  However it is vital we are represented and the Independent Providers so that all the pieces of the jigsaw are in the box.

'Partnership’ is a word used all the time, however there is little real involvement in moving the situation forward as everyone is so busy delivering their existing role, they often don’t look at the bigger picture.

A vital opportunity exists to share planning/training as a way forward to an effective, integrated Social Welfare Service.

Positive Side of our Social Care Workforce Role

• Image of Voluntary Sector as 'good place to work’ makes an attractive sector to potential staff.
• Job satisfaction is the phrase that is repeated at every staff appraisal - they enjoy the job.
• We often attract people with no social care qualifications and diverse backgrounds e.g. ex Publicans, rural workers, housewives who with training become valuable members of our team.  Some move on to higher level posts.

Our Staff structure lends itself to developing individuals skills

1. Volunteers of all ages join to gain skills, train, learn and develop into paid staff.  We regularly employ those who have been volunteers and then go through an open and equal access recruitment procedure.

2. New Deal or other initiatives have also been partly successful, those participants who have shown reliability, keenness and initiative have been employed.

3. Staff and Volunteers are routinely offered a wide variety of training on relevant issues e.g. from level 5 in Leadership, NVQ’s from 2-4 to basic skills, communication, project and service delivery, customer care etc.

This is a problem for us as we don’t have the funding of staff capacity to deliver training in a structured way, it can be hit and miss depending who has time to circulate opportunities, keep records etc.  We really could make a difference if we had the resources.

4. We want to develop opportunities to expand the skills of young people, it is much needed and many do not understand the wonderful opportunities, so we’d like to have Modern Apprenticeships etc to move forward the opportunities for people to develop their skills.

We would be happy to expand on any of the above issues if required.

Sue Richards
Director
26 October 2007