This document outlines plans to create a long-term strategic framework for the health and social care workforce in England. It will include regulated professionals working in adult social care for the first time. The framework will look at key drivers of workforce demand and supply over the long term to identify strategic choices and required actions. This will require collaborating with partners from all levels and sectors to build shared goals and assumptions to guide more detailed workforce plans nationally and locally. Achieving the required expertise can take over a decade, so workforce investment must consider needs for both the present and future.

1. Collaborating for
the Future:
Creating a Long-term
Strategic Framework
for Health and Social
Care Workforce ‘
PLEASE ADD HEE LOGO

2. • To work with our partners to create a long-term strategic framework for the health and social care workforce
to ensure we have the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours to deliver world leading services and
continued high standards of care. For the first time ever, the framework will include regulated professionals
working in adult social care, like nurses, social workers and occupational therapists.
• We will look at the key drivers of workforce demand and supply over the longer term and consider how
they may impact upon the required shape of the future workforce (in its broadest sense) to help identify the
main strategic choices facing us, develop a shared and explicit set of planning assumptions and identify the
actions required at all levels across social care and health using all our system levers.
• This will require us to work closely with partners from all levels and sectors, so that together we can build a
shared set of explicit assumptions and goals that will provide a clear framework within which more
detailed workforce plans can be developed and delivered at national and local level, and for different
pathways and professions, resulting in better care and better work for all.
• Achieving the required level of expertise and professional training can take more than a decade in our health
and social care system. It can take up to fifteen years to train a consultant, and typically three years for a
nurse or social worker to qualify, so investment in the workforce must reflect our ambitions for tomorrow
as well as the needs for today, with a focus on ‘foresight’ rather than ‘forecasting’.
Aims of the work

3. Establishing the workforce requirement is harder over time and becomes increasingly strategic:
The ‘Cone of Uncertainty’
DEGREE
OF
PRECISION
Vision:
• Shape and skills of
workforce
5 yrs 10 yrs 15 yrs 20 yrs
Very specific:
• Numbers
• Roles

4. Informed by
5 yrs 10 yrs 15 yrs 20 yrs
Integrated service, workforce
and finance planning
1 – 5 years
Trends in demand for health and care.
Whole labour market not just NHS
>15 years
Active planning for supply from core
education & training programmes
5-15 years
E.g. A refreshed LTP/strategy could include
high level workforce requirements, so that
service, finance and workforce planning is
aligned, supported by a more detailed
People Plan that essentially operationalises
the agreed plan within the agreed funding
(2024/25), with further pathway specific
plans for the priority pathways (i.e. cancer,
MH )
'Interpretive planning' over the long term,
taking demand signals from historic and forecast
future trends in the key drivers/variables. It can
provide high level scenarios/choices for decision
makers (DHSC/NHSE/ICSs/LAs) and a framework
within which more detailed workforce plans can
be built upon, IF the system can agree a shared
set of explcit assumptions.
Directionally aligned with
Collaboration is required across all 3 planning time horizons
NHSE/I lead, others contribute their
Levers (HEE, DHSC)
HEE lead/convene the conversation with the help of
NHSE/I, Skills for Care and DHSC, and present the
choices to system partners and decision makers

5. Organisational Local Authority National
Many SME’s conducting own
recruitment and workforce capacity
planning activity
LAs have responsibilities for
workforce planning, including their
market shaping responsibilities,
and the need to commission with
workforce in mind. (e.g. The Level 5
qualification for Commissioners has
a module focused on workforce
planning, to upskill commissioners
in this element of their role.
As there has not been a national
workforce strategy since 2009,
numerous stakeholders have
undertaken initiatives and made
recommendations for what should
be prioritised. E.g.
Some large orgs with HR
infrastructure undertake more
comprehensive activity.
The nature of workforce planning
varies by area, determined by the
priorities and pressures of the Local
Authority.
• Adult Social Care Leaders vision
for a future workforce strategy
Workforce planning speaks to the
ability to fulfil contractual and
regulatory obligations
Local Authorities plan for their own
workforce and are often competing
across boundaries to attract skills
and experience.
• LGA/ADASS/Skills for Care Adult
social care, workforce priorities
2020-25
In Social care, workforce planning in adult social care happens at many levels

6. @NHS_HealthEdEng
Strategy as interpretive planning
Increased long term supply
from domestic training with
surge capacity and culture of
life-long learning/good work
with the skills to work with
new roles and technology
and the headroom to be
agile, adaptive and ultimately
the driver of innovation.
Overarching strategic objectives for the health and care system
Greatest outputs for least inputs, with
IR and retention as compensatory
actions? Formal workforce, activity
based?
More and different, in a compassionate
& inclusive culture of ‘good work’?
Informal workforce and community
assets as co-creators of health?
‘Pessimists’ ‘Optimists’
If assumptions are
wrong, reduced long
term domestic
supply from training,
runs ‘hot’ topped up
with compensatory
actions from IR/RtP.
Drivers of change
Science
Tech & Innovation
Demographics
Health Inequalities
Expectations
Service Priorities
Social, political, economic,
environmental factors
History
Long term
domestic supply
from training
Strategic drivers of
service designs
and delivery
(Framework
15)
See ‘notes’ below for explanation of this slide

7. Process for development of the strategy
1. Call For Evidence – launched 20th July and closes 6th
September.
2. Engagement during September and October as part of
ongoing process (including Health, Social Care, National
Regional and ICS People Boards etc)
3. 3 deliberative events to be held:
• 1st November
• 9th December
• 9th February
Purpose to test out evidence and assumptions at key
points in the development with a wide group in a
facilitated event.
4. Round Table discussions for specific groups such as
patients and carers.
5. Further engagement through crowd sourcing and social
media

8. How do we take our strategic thinking about the future
workforce from…to
FORECASTING
Focus on expected future
Identifying a future which is an
extension of the present
Estimates what will happen,
assuming that past trends will
continue to be solid indicators
of future happenings
Focus on a range of futures
Searching for signals of potential
future disruptions at the margins
of the current system
FORESIGHT
Expands our thinking about what
is possible, helps us determine
how we choose to prepare for and
shape the future
Forecasting
ok 80% of the
time but
system
shocks…. E.g
HV/Covid

9. Knowledge,
Experience
Evidence
Thoughts
Concepts
Assumptions
Call for
Evidence
Survey
Thought
Leader
Round
Table
Analyst Review
of Evidence
Call for
Evidence
Analysis
Starting
Proposition
External
Challenge
Event 1 Event 2 Event 3
Final
Report
Further Research
August September October December Jan 2022 April 2022
November
Funneling down the complexity to a ‘workable’ set of planning assumptions
Social Care
Engagement
Workshops
(SfC)
Future
Patient/People
who need care
and support
Round table
C
o
m
p
l
e
x
i
t
y
ICS/Regional
People
Boards
ICS/Regional
People
Boards
ICS/Regional
People
Boards