Outcome: Improved well-being for the social care and early years workforce

Why it’s important

The well-being of the workforce is a focus of the Workforce strategy for health and social care.

There's an increasing amount of evidence linking the well-being, capability and motivation of the social care and early years workforce to improved outcomes for the children, young people and adults they provide care and support for.

A happy, healthy and supported social care and early years workforce in turn supports the well-being of the people in their care.

Our impact

We’re focusing on compassionate leadership and practical well-being support.

The social care and early years workforce are our biggest and most precious asset in providing high-quality care and support.

However, in too many cases, feedback from the workforce suggests they don’t always feel valued and supported.

This can lead to a lack of engagement and motivation, and affect attendance and turnover. It ultimately affects quality of care for the children, young people and adults at the centre of services.

There is little data available measuring the well-being of the workforce on a large scale.

During our consultation on the workforce strategy, we heard from more than 1,000 people who told us that the health and well-being of the workforce was of the utmost importance.

We’ll pilot a workforce survey in 2022 to 2023 to gather data about the well-being of the workforce. This will allow us to see the impact of our initiatives and target resources in the right areas.

During 2021 to 2022 we developed compassionate leadership resources. We also ran peer-group sessions for the workforce to improve well-being.

On the whole, the programme evaluations and other supporting evidence show we’ve provided programmes that meet recognised needs.

Programmes have consistently had a positive impact on those who take part. This impact extends to those who receive care and support.

The programmes are innovative, responsive and developed with the central aim of meeting the needs of the sector.

We also further developed our Employee Assistance Programme for the whole social care sector. The programme was established in 2020, during the pandemic.

We provided evidence to Welsh Government, which they used to develop a new well-being support offer for health and social care professionals. This was launched in April 2022 as Canopi.