Skills for Care: Recruiting disabled peope project overview

Resources to support the recruitmentand retention of disabled peopleSkills for Care is currently undertaking a new project to establish how we can support social careemployers to fully utilise the skills of disabled people within their workforce. This project is part of the‘I Care…’ recruitment and retention programme of work and links to the Recruitment and RetentionImplementation Plan developed by employers, for employers.The social care sector is one of the few growth industries that has real vacancies despite thecurrent climate and offers career progression opportunities. It is an industry in which the diversity ofemployees can contribute to service quality yet we know that disabled people are under representedwithin the workforce.This project aims to explore the barriers that prevent successful employment and progression ofdisabled people. We will use our findings to develop sector specific resources to support adultsocial care employers tap into this under represented group of potential employees to build theirbusinesses and deliver high quality care solutions for the range of people who use their services.What are we doing now?Skills for Care is working with one of our Board, Nina Osborne, who will be leading this project.Nina has experience as both a disabled worker within the social care sector and as a social careemployer. We will be contacting interested parties and experts for their support and involvement.The intention of this project is to build upon existing research and best practice. We recognise thereare many specialist organisations already providing information and hope to utilise their expertiseand contextualise best practice for the social care sector. The Care Providers Alliance (who chairthe Department of Health Recruitment and Retention sub-group) and a number of employerrepresentative organisations have already expressed an interest in supporting this project and we arecurrently seeking to identify other groups who may wish to do so.

To ensure our work has relevance and addresses both the real and perceived barriers that blockentry and progression into the social care workforce we are devising a questionnaire that will besent to disabled people’s representative groups and independent networks.What next?The returned questionnaires will be analysed and we will consult on the findings and ascertainwhere good practice lies which will challenge or redress any barriers. We will seek to engage withadult social care employers and disabled people already working within the sector to identify a fullrange of good practice case studies. These will add to Skills for Care’s range of ‘I Care...’ productsas well as forming the basis of any new resources to support social care employers to employdisabled people.Alongside these activities will be the core resources that already exist from specialist groups. Wewill ensure that where appropriate, the resources produced signpost to further information andguidance that can add value to their recruitment and retention activities and support them todevelop a more inclusive and dynamic social care workforce.What we will not do?This work is about best practice in recruitment, retention and progression of disabled people withinthe adult social care workforce. It is not meant to be a separate strategy that further alienatesor compartmentalises disabled people. Skills for Care has already produced a recruitment andretention toolkit for employers and work from this project will be used to update that toolkit. Thisproject seeks to provide further support and guidance for employers to integrate into their widerrecruitment and retention strategies when looking at this particular aspect of diversity.Get involvedIf you would like more information about the project or you would like to become involved in thework please contact:Annette Baines, Skills for Care Programme Head, Recruitment, Retention and International Work -email annette.baines@skillsforcare.org.uk or call 07866 740 642Nina Osborne - email ninaosborne@btinternet.com or call 01905 351635

Skills for Care: Recruiting disabled peope project overview

by Rich Watts

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