WHAT’S NEW?


ADULT SOCIAL CARE CONTRIBUTES £40.5 BILLION


TO ECONOMY Adult social care’s economic contribution has increased to £40.5 billion, according to research carried out by Skills for Care.


The new figure was revealed in Skills for Care’s annual ‘The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England, 2019’ report, using data from the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set supplied by thousands of employers.


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


The report also showed that around 237,000 adults, older people and carers received direct payments from councils’ social services departments in 2017/2018, and it is estimated that approximately 31% (75,000) of these recipients were employing their own staff.


The report also found that the number of adult social care jobs was estimated to have increased by around 1.2% (19,000 jobs) between 2017 and 2018. Since 2009, the number of adult social care jobs has increased by 22% (290,000 jobs).


Skills for Care estimates that the staff turnover rate of directly employed staff working in the adult social care sector was


SCIENTISTS IDENTIFY CRITICAL WINDOW FOR TREATMENT OF


ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE Neuroscientists at the University of Southampton have made a breakthrough in understanding how Alzheimer’s disease spreads through the brain, discovering a significant period of time where medical intervention could halt its onset.


A hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease is the accumulation of tau protein in neurons which causes loss of brain volume. This build up, known as neurofibrillary tangles, is formed when a diseased version of tau folds itself incorrectly. Prior to this research, published on Monday 28th


October in The Journal


of Neuroscience, very little was known about the timescale of this process and how the misfolded tau proteins spread to other cells.


Studying this in a human brain would be too complex, so the team from Southampton created a circuit of mouse neurons grown in a cell culture and introduced diseased tau proteins to these cells. The scientists observed that the tau very quickly spread to other neurons and started to misfold and accumulate. However, despite the tau build-up, it did not cause aggressive damage and both the donating


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30.8% in 2018/19. This equates to approximately 440,000 people leaving their jobs over the course of the year.


The research also concluded that the majority (91%) of the adult social care workforce were employed on permanent contracts; approximately half of the workforce (48%) worked on a full- time basis; 40% were part-time and the remaining 12% had no fixed hours.


Skills for Care estimates that 7.8% of roles in adult social care were vacant, equivalent to 122,000 vacancies at any one time.


To download ‘The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England, 2019’ report and accompanying infographic, visit: www.skillsforcare.org.uk/ StateOfEarlyRelease


https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2019/10/23/JNEUROSCI.1590-19.2019


and accepting neurons remained functional and capable of sending electrical messages.


Dr Katrin Deinhardt, lecturer in Neuroscience at the University of Southampton who supervised the research, said: “We saw that misfolding tau was not immediately toxic and that the affected cells could tolerate the build-up better than we anticipated. This is a really positive outcome and highlights that there is a window of time where therapeutic intervention could take place to rescue neurons with tau pathology.”


Dr James Connell, Research Manager at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said:“Spreading of abnormal tau is a well-studied target for future Alzheimer’s treatments and understanding more about its effects is a crucial goal of dementia research.


“This study highlights an early opportunity to target tau and modify disease progression. Other research teams will now build on this information. Alzheimer’s Research UK is currently funding more research in this area so that we leave no stone unturned in the search for life-changing treatments.”


The study was funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK and the Biotechnical and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).


The paper can be found here www.alzheimersresearchuk.org/orange


www.tomorrowscare.co.uk


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