Concern over Nottinghamshire County Council's ongoing staff shortage in adult social care sector

Apprenticeships and partnerships with universities could be needed to plug the county's ongoing staff shortage in adult social care.

This is according to a leading service director who has warned there is no silver bullet to solving recruitment issues in the sector.

Nottinghamshire County Council's adult social care and public health committee met on Monday to review the department’s ongoing financial situation, which shows a £2.31m underspend in its budget.

The main driver of this, councillors were told, was unspent staffing costs due to difficulties in filling a raft of vacancies.

Earlier this year, the committee approved the creation of 55.5 temporary full-time equivalent (FTE) social care posts as part of its recovery plan.

It was hoped at the time these posts would address the impact of delayed and new demand due to covid-19, including creating roles like social workers, occupational therapists and community care officers.

However, council documents state the recruitment process has been challenging, with the authority only managing to fill 21 out of the 55.5 vacancies.

A separate recruitment drive, also aiming to employ a further 55.5 FTE posts, has managed to fill 13 posts.

Documents add the social care workforce shortage is being felt across the sector, with local authorities and independent agencies all struggling to fill gaps in their staffing.

The council is now looking at ways to plug these holes, including strengthening its long-term planning to ensure it has people coming through the pipeline.

Kashif Ahmed, service director for integrated strategic commissioning and service improvement, told the committee work was ongoing to tackle the shortage — including building partnerships with universities.

He said the numbers recruited in the current drive were pretty good given the context of a national staff shortage, but warned there was not a hard and fast solution to the issue.

“Unfortunately, there isn’t a silver bullet or a magic one to solve the workforce shortage,” he said.

“It is really challenging across the board, in particular around qualified staff, social workers, occupational therapists and community care officers.

“It’s going to require a long-term, strategic plan around workforce and we are looking at apprenticeships and having more conversations and partnerships with universities.

“The reality is we’d need to see a much greater increase of people coming through the pipeline because the demand currently is so high.

“We need to increase all mechanisms we’ve got around recruitment. It is really challenging, we are exhausting all our other options.”

The shortages come at a time when healthcare services in Nottinghamshire are facing unprecedented demand, with council documents stating many systems are declaring either ‘Opel 3’ or ‘Opel 4’ — the highest level of risk.

It follows the emergence of the omicron covid variant in what many expect to be one of the most challenging winters for health and social care services.

Melanie Brooks, corporate director of adult social care, told councillors the department was in emergency crisis response and was this week further suspending business as usual to provide critical services only.

Committee members raised concerns over social care staff shortages and the impact moving forwards.

Mr Ahmed told councillors the department had imminent actions it would take including looking into volunteering and redeploying staff who are not currently working on the front line.

“This will support some of the short-term challenges we have got at the moment,” he added.