The challenge in numbers
1.59m
The number of people
working in adult social care in England in 2023/24.
8.3%
of Adult Social care roles were vacant in 2023/24.
40k
The number of additional workers needed in children's early years by Sept 2025.
63%
of applicants to children's residential worker roles in 2023/24 didn't have the right skills.
These figures are stark. As a country we are hugely dependent on agency social care workers to meet the needs of some of our most vulnerable people. Everyday agency workers play a vital role in changing lives and keeping the wheels of our public sector turning, however we need to do more to put stability back into this sector.
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We all know using agency workers is more expensive than permanent staff, but what other negative impacts does this dependency create? By nature agency usage results in inconsistency in staff teams, resulting in weaker relationships with supported people, and as a result poorer outcomes. Great team cultures are harder to meet when people aren't employed permanently, and it's a difficult to build and retain that sense of 'team'. Combined these challenges further weaken the 'brand' of social care as an dynamic and impactful sector, filled with opportunities for its new recruits.
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Of course, This challenge is not going to be solved overnight, it’s something that will require time as we change image, cultures and skillsets across the sector.
Where we came from.
Back in 2022, Yonder’s parent company, Capacity, delivered a significant engagement project across all 23 local authorities in the North West to reimagine the children’s social care workforce.
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We listened closely, talking to current and previous children’s social workers, those who train, lead and support them, and those with procurement, financial and organisational development responsibilities.
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Our conversations gave us deep insight into some of the biggest challenges facing the workforce and helped us identify some key areas for collaborative action.
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Responding to this insight, and building on recommendations from the 2021 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, we began to think about how we could take action to reduce local authorities’ reliance on agency social workers.
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Working with the Department for Education and a core group of local authorities, we began to explore the need for a regional not-for-profit solution. Key for us was understanding the financial and social impact such a solution could have on our care providers.
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The answer was – not enough.
Where we are now.
​In mid-2024 we went away and adapted our proposals, moving our focus beyond just temporary recruitment and towards the bigger, systemic issues around social care workforce. We went back to the insights outlined above, exploring the core themes around staff attraction, development, engagement and retention. We thought bigger, about what we could do to reduce the need for agencies full stop.
This thinking formed our core offer, the things social care deliverers (whatever sector they work in) need to do better, to make a bigger change.
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Find the right people.
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Grow the right people.
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Keep the right people.
We want to rebuild people's pride in social care as a career, to make sure it's a place workers feel valued and invested in. If we can do this our teams will have the time, space and tools to reignite their passion and form stronger relationships, with each other and most importantly with the people they support.