FEATURE Positive planning
Following the launch of their new four-year strategy, Skills for Care’s Director of Operations Tricia Pereira discusses why supporting culture and diversity is at the heart of the organisation's plans.
One of the long-term aims of Skills for Care’s new four-year strategy is that there is equality among everybody working in social care, so that people feel included and valued for the work they do and are motivated to stay working in the sector, having the choice to develop and progress in their careers.
I am incredibly proud to be part of the team leading on this important work.
This is all part of our mission to support and empower current and future social care leaders, employers, and the wider workforce.
At Skills for Care, we understand the importance of inclusive and positive workplace environments. By using a combination of tools, resources, our platform and our voice to raise awareness of the value of healthy workplaces we want to enable leaders to develop this culture in their organisations and in the wider system as part of integrated care.
We also want to help to grow a workforce which is supported to stay well and to remain and progress in the sector.
To support this, we will be promoting compassionate leadership styles. Promoting and developing compassionate leadership in social care will also enable supportive workplace cultures that empower workers and provide them with safe spaces and resources to have productive conversations about race and equality.
This is something that we’re supporting within Skills for Care internally too, as we encourage our colleagues to have honest, open, and oſtentimes ‘clumsy conversations.’
The pandemic had and continues to have a profound impact on everyone working across health and social care. We provided support to many employers, organisations, and employees, and also fed into the inquiry by the Health and Social Care Select Committee on workforce burnout in the NHS and social care. We highlighted the impact on staff wellbeing and how supportive leadership, is key to post- pandemic recovery.
We know that the benefits of an open and supportive working environment are multi-fold, with studies showing that organisations do better when workers feel valued and listened to.
Compassionate leadership, showing appreciation for employees, treating staff with a sense of dignity and care, and respecting each individual’s unique attributes, will support workforce retention and wellbeing.
Our work to support a positive workplace which promotes equity, equality and diversity stretches across other pillars of our strategy too, including our work around capacity and capability. We are working to increase the visible
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representation of people from diverse backgrounds in non- statutory social care roles. We are delighted that this year, we increased the cohorts of our Moving Up programme for 2021 resulting with each course being quickly booked up with aspirant diverse leaders, and we are keen to provide additional cohorts early in the new year to enable more people to make use of this opportunity.
Supporting culture and diversity is a key part of our strategy because the strength of social care is in celebrating, valuing, and recognising what makes people unique and supporting them to overcome challenges. To do this, it is vital that the adult social care workforce reflects the society we live in, and that people feel included and treated equally.
This is why we’re committed to developing and promoting tools and resources to help employers and the workforce implement inclusive and positive organisational cultures. This includes development of competencies and behaviours focused on the implementation of the Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard, which will allow us to monitor progress and drive up standards and practice across the sector.
We will also support the sector to monitor and report on progress in implementing employee diversity objectives, using standardised data and measures, and identifying opportunities to continually improve.
Data is crucial in allowing us to shape the best direction for the sector and our Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) allows us to gain sector insights which help us to paint a clear picture of what the sector looks like now and make projections for the future. This includes insights into the age, gender, race, nationality, and other demographics of the sector. These insights are published in our national reports, including our recently released ‘State of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ report.
As we move into the new year, we are delighted that Skills for Care is continuing to put equality and culture at the forefront of what we do, and excited to see the impact that our new strategy has over the next four years in supporting the social care workforce to meet their goals for equality, inclusion, and diversity.
www.skillsforcare.org.uk
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