SOCIAL SERVICES

Structure of social services in UK

Structure of social services in UK

Introduction

The ageing of the population in the UK and other western countries presents key challenges for public policy. Social care for older people, including care in nursing and residential homes and home care services faces increasing demand. The implications for the reform of the social care system have been the focus of ongoing policy debate in the UK. A fundamental concern for meeting the needs of older people, now and in the future, is the workforce required to deliver social care services. Chronic difficulties in the recruitment and retention of social care workers have been identified, which impact both on the capacity of the sector to deliver services and on the quality of care support.

Social care, which includes a range of care-related occupations, e.g. care assistants in residential care homes and home care services, is one of the lowest paid sectors of the labour market. The sector has historically been reliant on women, who have combined low paid part-time work in social care with unpaid caring responsibilities for families. Although the introduction of the National Minimum Wage in 1999 brought about an increase in average pay levels for social care workers, particularly in care homes, most pay has since stayed on or near the National Minimum Wage. Increasingly, migrant workers, employed to care for older people. This trend is taking place in other European countries, such as Austria, Ireland and Italy, and in North America. In the UK, social care providers have turned to recruitment within and outside the European Union as a means of filling their vacancies for care workers. Likewise, migrants in the UK have entered social care work because of high levels of demand for workers in this sector of the labour market. These developments point to the following key issues for public policy: The two major questions of this topic are:

1.What should be done to tackle the workforce challenges facing the social care sector?

2.Are migrant workers a solution to those challenges?

Main Body

In the second half of the twentieth century, demographic ageing reached unprecedented levels in the UK as well as in other western countries. This trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. According to population estimates and projections, the number of people aged 65 and over in England will increase by 65% from 8.2 million to 13.4 million between 2007 and 2032. There is likely to be an even greater increase of 136% among those aged 85 and over. This growth in the number of older people, which includes people with disabilities or long-term health conditions, has major implications for demand for social care services. The provision of care for older people relies on both the unpaid care of families and other carers alongside publicly and privately funded social care services. Social care services, usually arranged by local authorities, through funding from central government supplemented by revenue from council tax, other local sources and by charges that older people are asked to ...