Health and care academy a first step to fix staff crisis

recruitment crisis is affecting our health and social care services. With an ageing population, we need more young people to work in many of the caring professions. But there are not enough, and austerity is not helping.

In a briefing to North Lanarkshire’s education committee, officials are particularly frank. As a result of staff shortages, the system will be at breaking point by 2030, or sooner, they warn. The same could apply to many council areas, which is why the initiative the council is putting forward is a welcome one.

The intention is to set up a health and social care academy which will help improve the area’s employment record – joblessness is higher than the national average – by giving people skills needed in the care sector, thereby relieving recruitment pressures.

The council’s proposals are certainly good in principle. The academy will look to offer local people a range of ways to access training and target young people, who are under-represented in the care workforce, as well as older people who may be willing to consider a change of career. Apprenticeships will be supported. Career pathways will be clearer.

Qualifications should become more flexible, so trainees are not tied to a single employer such as the NHS, sensible at a time when so much in the field is changing.

However there are elephants in this room. The first is the need for more nursing staff. There is a national shortage of nurses, but particularly in social care with a ward job often seen as more attractive. The second is the issue of pay and status. The crisis the care sector cannot be properly addressed until working in the sector is valued more highly.

Budgets limit North Lanarkshire’s answer to both these problems. It plans to use more generic care workers and warns we cannot have the same reliance on medical staff as in the past.

The council should approve this positive scheme, but there are major challengesahead inaworldwherea job in a supermarket can still seem a better option for many Scots than work in a care setting.