Does the Government have any evidence or data that can measure the level of vacancies in the adult care sector during the last five years?
Data was not collected for 2019-20 due to the demand for statistics and data to measure the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, therefore, only limited comparisons with previous years can be made. Prior to this, the Welsh Government collected data on local authority staffing through the staffing data return. Data for 2004-05 to 2018-19 (at 31 March each year) is available on StatsWales at https://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Health-and-Social-Care/Social-Services/Staffing. From 2014-15, the staffing return was revised to match the revised Qualification Framework issued by the Care Council Wales.
We are working closely with the workforce and service regulators, Social Care Wales (SCW) and Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW) to bring together all the data requests to ease the burden on the sector and collect more regular data.
SCW gathers data on the number of workers in the sector through an annual survey, which now includes the number of social worker and social care worker vacancies. The report for 2021 is available here: Social care workforce report.