An overview of our progress against this outcome in 2024 to 2025
There are still significant issues with attracting, recruiting and keeping people in the social care and early years sectors in Wales.
More than 80,000 people are estimated to be employed in the social care workforce in Wales. Our Workforce data report 2023 shows that:
- 79.4 per cent are on permanent contracts, in-line with 2022
- 1.8 per cent are agency workers – 3.2 per cent work for commissioned providers (up from 1.7 per cent in 2022) and 0.4 per cent for local authorities (in-line with the 0.5 per cent in 2022).
More than 16,000 people work in early years and childcare in Wales
(Source: 2018 Welsh Government Review of Childcare sector)
Our 2024 workforce survey shows:
- 69 per cent work in social care because they wanted a job that would make a difference to people’s lives
- 48 per cent found out about working in social care through friends and family working in the sector
- 25 per cent say they’re likely to leave the soector in the next 12 months
Here’s what we’ve done over the past year to try to address these issues:
WeCare Wales
We continued to build on the WeCare Wales brand to attract and recruit people to the social care and early years sectors. We ran 5 national campaigns about specific parts of the sector, such as Residential Childcare; Early years and child care; Social Work; Homecare/reablement; Apprenticeship/volunteering. The number of jobs posted on the WeCare Wales jobs portal, where social care and early years employers can advertise their vacancies, increased, as did the numbers of people visiting the portal and the WeCare Wales website:
- 4,179 jobs were advertised on the jobs portal (up from 3,551 in 2023 to 2024)
- 9,888 clicks linked people directly with the employer and/or recruitment page
- 67,367 visitors to the WeCare Wales jobs portal website (up from 57,675 jobs portal visits in 2023 to 2024)
- 222,368 WeCare Wales website visitors (up from 219,286 website visitors in 2023 to 2024).
Introduction to social care programme
We run a funded training programme for people with an interest in working in social care called an Introduction to social care.
In 2024 to 2025:
- 1,439 people signed up for the programme (up from 1,079 in 2023 to 2024)
- nearly 60 per cent completed the programme (up from 53 per cent in 2023 to 2024)
- 272 people who took part were looking for social care employment after the programme.
Introduction to early years and childcare programme
We also run a funded training programme to raise awareness of what it’s like to work in childcare.
In 2024 to 2025:
- 414people completed the training, twice as many as in 2023 to 2024 when 205 people took part
- 93 per cent of those who took part said they’d be looking for a job in childcare after the course
One of them told us: “Just days after completing the Introduction to Childcare course, I secured a job in a nursery. I’ve been working for seven months and am now being offered an apprenticeship.”
Young person’s introduction to childcare programme
We’ve introduced a new programme for secondary school aged young people – 43 schools took part.
- 2,932 young people completed the course – 250 per cent increase in the number of young people who said they were more interested in a career in childcare after completing the course than before they did the course
- 17.5 per cent of the courses were provided in Welsh.
One of the teachers told us: “Thank you so much for the session on an Introduction to Childcare, it was really informative, and my students were engaged and making notes all the way through. It has certainly opened their eyes into working within childcare.”
Providing financial support to social work students to support them in their studies
Our bursary programme continued to support undergraduate and post-graduate social work students. We paid 956 bursaries , with more financial support provided for travel and childcare. The programme also responded to financial hardship concerns and worked with Welsh Government to explore options for improving support. The Open University’s January intake added further capacity through the local authority led Grow Your Own scheme:
- 118 new social work students received a bursary:
- 71 undergraduate students
- 47 Master’s students
- 23 additional funded places for social work students.
Giving a grant which provides training and development opportunities for people employed in social care (SCWWDP)
We’ve continued to support the Social Care Wales Workforce Development Grant (SCWWDP):
- £7,640,051 was paid to local authorities through the grant and was match funded by £3,274,308 local authority funding.
The grant is used by local authorities to support training and workforce development activity in their organisations and for providers in the independent and voluntary sector. Due to the scale of this investment, we’ll set out how the grant was used in 2024 to 2025 in a national themes and trends report. This will be available on our website in a few months. Find out how the 2023 to 2024 grant was spent.