Vacancies / Social Care Staff - Freedom of information requests
Title or Description
Vacancies / Social Care Staff
FOI Number
15912
Date Received
15/12/2021
Type of Request
FOI
Request or Question
1) How many vacancies are there in the a) public sector social care workforce, b) private sector social care workforce, and c) voluntary sector social care workforce engaged in the delivery of Council social care contracts?2) How do these number compare to 2019/20?3) What additional measures is the Council taking to recruit social care staff?4) Have staff shortages in your council area had an impact on care at home packages being reduced?
Response
1 and 2) As of 20/12/2021, we have 15892.34 established hours within our public sector workforce, of these 6355.84 are currently vacant which equates to almost 40%. Unfortunately we are unable to provide these details for 2020 as our ERP system does not hold a history of established hours therefore we give notice under s17 of FOI(S)A2002 and declare that the information is not held.
1b) Within the private sector every care provider is offering vacancies. This is not possible to quantify as it changes and job vacancies are often tailored to meet the applicant availability rather than the service need. Therefore we refer to S17 of FOI(S)A 2002 and declare that the information is not held.
1c) For the employment of Direct Payment Personal Assistants there are currently around 80 vacancies. This is up from 40 Direct Payment PA's for 2019/2020.
Due to a recruitment pause over the festive season to enable essential changes to the system we only have 6 adverts currently running for SBCares, these are for various positions and contract sizes.
In 2020 on this date we had 9 posts advertised for various contract sizes
3) We have recruited two HR Specialists who are focussing solely on the recruitment process, building partnerships with agencies to expand the recruitment pool and supporting managers with the whole recruitment process.
We have volunteers covering non registered care task 20+ in Homecare.
We are working with college to attract students and will put through training.
We have asked for staff volunteers to come forward to support with care.
4) Staff shortages have impacted on the ability to provide packages of care in terms of the ability to accept new packages of care, increase packages of care and to support with discharges from hospital. As part of our contingency measures some packages of care have been reduced and will be reinstated or reviewed in line with our contingency plans.
