A strong social care sector is crucial for the NHS

Responding to the Skills for Care report on adult social care, the chief executive of The NHS Alliance, Sir Ciarán Devane, said:

"A strong social care sector is crucial to solving the challenges facing the NHS and achieving the government’s ambitions – including preventing ill health, moving care closer to people’s homes and getting healthy patients out of hospital more quickly.

"Perceptions of low pay and long hours have led to huge gaps in social care staffing, so it is encouraging now to see vacancy rates in social care falling.

"However, the figures also show there could be further trouble ahead with falling numbers of UK-trained staff and a sharp decline in new international recruits.

"We hope that the Casey Review of social care will build on the recent progress to tackle recruitment and retention challenges, and we urge the government to accelerate the review and move quickly to implement any recommendations."