Responding to the Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary’s plan to deliver a new deal for care workers, Chief Executive Officer of the Florence Nightingale Foundation Professor Greta Westwood CBE said:

“We welcome the commitment from the Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary to deliver a social care workforce plan. Social care nurses do vital and complex work, often in the most challenging of circumstances. For too long, they have been left out of the national conversation about public services workforce planning. This must change.

We are now in a situation where adult social care services are under significant pressure, with over 150,000 vacancies and a high turnover rate. Any new deal for the social care workforce must include long-term approaches to retain our talented social care nurses. This must include increased support for their education including leadership development needs that will help social care nurses progress in their careers and lead at every level. We know from our work supporting social care nurses to lead at ICB level that these professionals are often the lynch pin connecting health and care services across the system.

As was the case with the Government’s recently published Long Term Workforce Plan for the NHS in England, the success of this proposed social care workforce plan will rely on long-term and adequate funding. We look forward to seeing more detail about Labour’s plans for social care reform in the coming weeks.”