Skills for Care


Skills for Care is the strategic body for workforce development in adult social care in England.
Skills for Care is an independent registered charity working with 21,500 adult social care employers in England to set the standards and qualifications for social care workers. For the financial year ended 31 March 2018, around 85% of revenue was received in the form of an annual work programme from the Department of Health and Social Care.

Role

Skills for Care work with employers to gather data on the social care workforce through the National Minimum Data Set for Social Care that provides robust evidence to analyse emerging issues for the social care sector. NMDS-SC and other research projects are designed to create a well trained workforce capable of meeting the challenges the social care sector faces. In August 2019, the NMDS-SC will be switched to an upgraded system known as the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set. This online data collection system is the leading source of workforce data for the adult social care sector in England. It will hold information on approx. 22,000 care providing locations and 750,000 workers.
Skills for Care offers funding for training to adult social care employers through a Workforce Development Fund and a Workforce Development Innovation Fund.

Area networks

Skills for Care's six supporting area networks contribute to the improvement of social care through workforce development activities in each region of England.
Skills for Care's area networks act as brokers for funding for workforce development and training.
Area Networks also develop partnerships with employers to help them to get the best out of resources available for social care workforce development in their area. They can help employers to plan their workforce development requirements.