Consultations

Opportunity to access the government's flagship £340million skills fund by getting involved with a bid to support social care and early years services.

Demand for services in our sector is projected to grow rapidly, and with this increased demand for provision comes the on-going challenge of attracting and recruiting the required workforce. Employers consistently report problems with attracting the right people, with the right values into frontline care roles; in many cases due to the general public's limited understanding of the breadth of rewarding care sector career opportunities.

Skills for Care feels strongly that the sector should make an application to access funds that will support this work. We committed to supporting employers in an application for funding for a proposed solution; to build and implement a 'Talent Pipeline' to attract, recruit and develop the right people into the right roles within the sector. The pipeline will include careers information, advice and guidance, a values and skills sector-specific screening process, a values based recruitment, selection and matching process and a quality assured training and assessment infrastructure that leads to recognised and transferable professional status.

The Talent Pipeline will meet the needs of providers who deliver social care and early years services and who have recruitment and retention challenges and we want to hear from you to develop the bid further. There is more detail on the proposal in this presentation.

Working with employers, Skills for Care submitted an application to the Employer Ownership of Skills Fund before the second round of funding closed in March 2013. We current await confirmation as to whether this application is successful. If the Talent Pipeline is of interest to your organisation and you wish to be more involved should funding be allocated, please contact Lori.Field@skillsforcare.org.uk to be updated

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