Impact report: 2021 to 2022

Areas of focus

We‘ve focused on workforce well-being, developing the workforce and providing support for those delivering services. We’ve also looked to strengthen our role for prioritising research and capturing data and evidence.

The provision of social care and early years services will continue to develop. This is due to the lasting impact of the pandemic, economic pressures and the needs of communities.

We continue to listen to the workforce, employers and strategic leaders. We want to make sure that we understand these challenges.

We also want to recognise opportunities to support the sectors to recover and stabilise for the short, medium and longer term.

The workforce is still struggling with the changes brought about by the pandemic. These changes have placed extra demands on staff, leading to an increase in stress and lower morale and job satisfaction.

We also saw and contributed to stronger partnership working between the NHS and local government during the pandemic. This supports the ambitions of A healthier Wales and our health and social care workforce strategy.

Social care workers play a vital role in safeguarding and caring for adults, children, their families and carers.

They help people live the lives they want and support people to develop and remain active and independent. Social care workers also help people to stay safe and well connected to their community and wider networks.

Early years workers help give our children a great start in life and provide valuable support for parents. They do this alongside family, friends, volunteers and other public services.

Reducing the impact of disadvantage

We’ve seen a shift in our understanding of how inequality, discrimination and exclusion are in-built into our world. As a society we need to respond to that new understanding.

Strong social care and early years systems in Wales makes sure we can reduce the impact of disadvantage. This disadvantage may come through poverty, neglect, illness, disability, race or other protected characteristics.

So it’s vital these services are improved to meet the needs of Welsh citizens.

The recent census provides data on a growing and ageing population in Wales.

The trend of population ageing has continued, with more people than ever before in the older age groups. The scale and complexity of people’s needs will increase demand for social services in the future.

Supporting person-centred care

An evaluation of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 carried out by Welsh Government highlights the challenges faced in transforming services.

The study looked at what impact the legislation has had on the quality of life and well-being of those who receive care and support.

The report notes that changes to well-being may take a very long time to become visible.

However, those who took part identified relatively few positive well-being impacts linked to their experience with social services.

Where positive impacts have occurred, they were often down to good person-centred care and support.

We’re supporting this approach by providing person-centred learning and development opportunities. This is available to professionals across Wales.

Working together

As a national leadership organisation, working with others is central to how we operate. Partnerships lie at the heart of our work.

This includes having conversations with the people affected by our work. We want to find out what’s important to them and reflect on their views before we make important decisions.

We recognise that the solutions to many of these problems lie in strategic and policy-related issues. These include funding for social care and early years, system re-design, pay and parity of esteem.

We continue to provide evidence, insight and professional advice to Welsh Government officials and Ministers. This will support their ambitions to find solutions.

We don’t have all the data we need to measure our impact fully. We are working with stakeholders to determine which data will be most meaningful to help the sector continuously improve.

We plan to develop our data portal and to pilot a workforce survey during 2022 to 2023. This will provide an opportunity for us to hear directly from the front line, as well as their managers and leaders.

This rich data source will be used to inform our own work. It could potentially inform the work of others, where we don’t have the remit ourselves.

Mick Giannasi, Chair and Sue Evans, Chief Executive