Safe and effective staffing in health and social care: analysis of responses

Section 6 – Support for the development of validated tools and methodologies for the social care sector

The Nursing and Midwifery Workload and Workforce Planning tools and methodologies that will be specifically included in the legislation have been developed over a number of years with investment of considerable time and resource.

The development of similar approaches for the social care sector will require support for both the Care Inspectorate and the service providers who engage with them in the development and validation of tools and methodologies.

Question 6: What support do you think will be required / most useful to enable the development of validated tools and methodologies for the social care sector?

i. Dedicated central expertise for the identification of specified settings where the development of workload and workforce planning tools and methodologies would be practicable and beneficial.

ii. Additional resource for the Care Inspectorate to enable the proposed functions.

iii. Training for key personnel in the sector in the development of workforce planning approaches.

iv. Dedicated resource for service providers who engage in the development and validation of approaches, tools and methodologies.

v. Training for key personnel in specified services once validated tools and methodologies are confirmed through regulations.

Question 6 of the consultation asked respondents to rate the above statements as Very Important, Important, Not Very Important or Not Important At All.

There was some divergence in this question between individuals and organisations. For organisations over 90% of respondents rated each suggestion as Very Important or Important.

However 13% of individuals rated the first option as 'not very important' and 21% rated the second option as 'not very important'.

The remaining 3 options had over 90% of individuals rating them as either Very Important or Important.

vi. Other - please specify.

In addition to the support set out above, respondents were asked to provide any other areas of support that they felt should be considered. A total of 27 responses were received to this question, the most common themes identified were:

Other themes that emerged from responses included staff and trade union participation and reflecting on the lessons learned from the health sector.