Workforce well-being annual report: 2024 to 2025

In recent years there has been growing evidence showing how supporting well-being can benefit people working in social care and early years and childcare, and improve the quality of care people receive.

Working in social care or early years and childcare can be an inspiring and rewarding career, but we know that the pressures in these sectors can affect workforce well-being.

It’s one of the ambitions of A Healthier Wales, our joint workforce strategy with Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) for health and social care, to create an engaged, motivated and healthy workforce. Our strategic plan also sets out our commitment to improving well-being for the social care and early years workforce.

Evidence tells us that good workplace well-being makes a real difference. It means:

• we have a sense of purpose and achievement in our role
• we perform better if we’re happier at work and we’re confident in what we’re doing, which means we support people better
• staff who feel supported at work are more likely to stay with an organisation.

We’ve produced an evidence summary about the link between good workplace well-being and retention, which you can read on our Insight Collective website.

Workforce well-being must be a group effort. At Social Care Wales, we provide frameworks and tools to help the sector work towards a positive culture that supports the well-being of the workforce.

Our framework, Your well-being matters, sets out actions employers, manager and workers can take to achieve better well-being. Each area of the workforce, along with trade unions, plays an important role in bringing this vision to life.

In January and February 2024, we carried out our annual ‘Have your say’ social care workforce survey, to ask people in social care about the things that affect their health and well-being.

This year, we asked more questions about things such as bullying, harassment and discrimination, to get a deeper understanding of workers’ experiences. In total, 5,024 social care workers responded, from a wide range of roles. This was an increase of almost 2,000 on the number who responded last year.

Our workforce insight series briefing, Supporting the well-being of the social care workforce in Wales 2024, summarises the main findings around workforce well-being.

Here's an overview:

• 77 per cent of social care workers said their morale was good

• social care workers scored lower on life satisfaction and happiness, and higher on anxiety than the general population

• 57 per cent said they struggled to switch off when they leave work

• 41 per cent suggested they had enough support to deal with stress

• the main causes of stress were reported as workload (39 per cent), paperwork or administrative workload (33 per cent) and worrying about things outside of work (25 per cent)

• 52 per cent suggested they'd attended work at least twice in the past year despite being so ill they should have stayed at home

• most people feel supported by their colleagues (79 per cent) and their manager (70 per cent)

• 14 per cent of the workforce don't feel safe at work, and this figure rises to 22 per cent for social workers

• 38 per cent of the workforce have access to sick pay beyond statutory sick pay, dropping to 31 per cent of care workers

• 57 per cent said their services had the right staff. 

In 2024, Early Years Wales caried out a survey of its members to learn more about the mental health of early years staff.

The results showed that many people working across the early years sector experience negative mental health and well-being. Many of the workforce often feel undervalued within settings, and also by the wider public.

These findings show how important it is that we continue to offer our programme of well-being information sessions, which include topics such as mental health, psychological safety and speaking out safely. We’re also continuing to promote the well-being framework as a resource to help promote well-being in settings.

We’ll use what we learn from these surveys, along with research and ongoing engagement with the sector and our partners, to inform our work to support the well-being of the workforce.

We’re continuing to deliver on our commitment to improve workforce well-being by:

• promoting our health and well-being framework and well-being webpages, where employers and employees can measure their organisation against an agreed set of standards

• hosting out first online well-being week for the social care and early years workforce

• providing information sessions, workshops and talks for the sector about how they can look after their well-being at work, including psychological safety and creating policies that support workplace well-being

• running an online well-being community of practice and support network to help the sector share ideas and overcome challenges

• offering targeted training to support managers, such as the mental health and well-being toolkit series and speaking out safely

• introducing a “Looking after and improving workforce well-being” category in the 2024 Accolades, which was won by the Caernarfon-based social enterprise, Antur Waunfawr

• continuing to promote Canopi as an important source of confidential mental health and well-being support for the workforce. 

In October 2022, we launched an all-Wales framework for the social care, early years and childcare sector.

At our events, we asked for feedback about attendees’ awareness of the framework and how useful they found it. Of those who provided feedback, six out of ten people were already aware of the framework. We also heard some examples of how it’s been used in the workplace. 

“The well-being framework implements continuous learning and professional development and creating a workplace where everyone is involved and participating and supporting ourselves and colleagues.”

“(The framework) has influenced HR policies to support well-being of employees.”

“This has helped me in supporting a team of staff with this role being my first in line management.”

The number of visits to the framework landing page and well-being web pages remained consistent throughout the year, with a monthly average of 50 and 214 visits respectively. This has highlighted an opportunity to explore new ways of increasing visibility and engagement.

From January 2025, we asked the workforce whether the framework helped them in their work in any way.

Those who said it helped them told us that framework has:

• influenced HR policies to support employees’ well-being

• created a safe environment for people to speak up

• been a part of all aspects of training and development.

The feedback from people who were unaware of the framework highlights the need to promote it further and achieve a wider reach.

Over the last year we held learning sessions for the sector, which were attended by 260 people. These events provided valuable opportunities for social care professionals to share best practice, build knowledge, and strengthen their well-being and resilience.

Highlights:

• We held 27 learning events, with themes including:

• well-being policies

• psychological safety

• the mental health toolkit

• practice sharing.

• 100 per cent of participants said they had learned something
  

• 98.8 per cent said they were able to use what they learned in the workplace.

We had positive feedback from participants. Here are some of the things they told us:

“Well-being comes from within yourself and marries up with physical health.”

“Really good guidance on where I can start with my well-being policy, and the power of data collection before and after.”

“Speaking up safely isn't just about creating a safe environment for your staff, it's for you to speak up too.”

“We need to lead by example. Learn to listen, the emptying of the bucket and look after ourselves to enable us to look after others.”

“I initially joined the course to find out ways of supporting my staff, but realised it was good for me too, and thankfully a lot of what I try to do to minimise stress was more or less right, so it was good to have the reassurance.”

“I found out about so many free resources.”

This year, we held our first Well-being week. This was a virtual conference that took place from 20 to 25 January to coincide with Blue Monday, which is often considered the most challenging day of the year for mental health.

We offered practical learning and information sessions, in line with our four well-being commitments. This supported our wider aim of improving the workforce’s well-being.

We held nine online sessions, which were attended by 313 people. The topics we explored included:

• how to create well-being policies

• speaking up safely

• supporting teams after a critical incident

• the mental health toolkit

• psychological safety.

The sector directly shaped these themes and topics. We drew on insights from a range of sources such as feedback from previous events, ongoing conversations with the workforce, and what we learned from our annual workforce survey. We also made sure our themes were aligned to the commitments set out in our framework.

Well-being week highlighted the sector’s commitment to creating mentally healthy work environments and showed the value of bringing people together to learn, reflect, and build on what works.

We received positive feedback from attendees at a number of these events. Here are some of the things they told us:

“Really informative session and well enjoyed.”

“Excellent speaker, Benna Waites, really helpful and educational, right balance of speaking and interaction, lovely.”

“The programme this week has been excellent and included topics that I wouldn't have thought of- well done team for putting this together.”

“Great topic, and I'm grateful to Bridgend for being so open about their experiences in such tragic circumstances.”

“I attend as many sessions as I can to remind myself of the importance of 'self care and awareness.”

“It's good to know what is happening outside of our own organisation, and what is available to support us in our role.”

We also presented at forums, roadshows, and conferences, to raise awareness of workforce well-being and the support available through our framework and resources. A wide audience attended these sessions, including:

• managers

• early years and social care practitioners

• commissioning leads

• NHS leaders.

This helped us extend our reach so our messages were heard across different areas of health and social care.

Our contribution to the well-being agenda was also recognised at a national level. The Minister for Mental Health and Wellbeing referred to our work on workforce well-being and the framework in her speech at the Canopi Symposium for Neurodiverse Workers. This highlights the value and relevance of our approach to a broader policy and practice audience.

 We’ve worked with several partners and internal colleagues.

• We brought together sector representatives at our national Social Care Well-being Advisory Group, to share concerns and issues. We also contributed to the work of the Social Care Fair Work Forum on understanding menopause support in the sector.

• We shared our approach and learning with colleagues in England at Partners in Health and Care, to help them develop ways to support workplace well-being.

• We continued to share good practice and resources between health and social care to drive improvement, and between us we offered reciprocal places on health and well-being networks.  

• We continued to promote the mental health support service ‘Canopi’. As part of our annual workforce survey, we asked people where they would typically look for information about well-being support in the workplace. We receive regular data from Canopi, including the number of referrals from the social care sector, along with insights into the reasons for referrals and the types of support accessed.

• We worked with RCS (Rhyl City Strategy) to engage with the sector. Together, we promoted the support available and developed content for their learning sessions.

• We worked with Care Inspectorate Wales to support its learning and development programme for inspectors. We delivered sessions about well-being during inspection and created a folder of signposting resources for inspectors to use.

• We’ve established links with other areas of work in Social Care Wales and strengthened the connection between well-being and compassionate leadership, strengths-based practice and positive cultures. We’ve developed well-being messaging and content that’s shared out to the workforce in new ways, increasing our reach and the power and relevance of our messaging.

Our digital community continues to grow as a safe and collaborative space to connect around a shared commitment to workforce well-being.

Over the past year, we received 26 new membership requests, bringing the total membership to 67. This steady growth reflects an ongoing appetite for connection, shared learning, and peer support.

The community is open to leaders, managers, and frontline practitioners, and offers a dedicated space for members to:

• find news, events and resources   

• share good practice and ideas or challenges in this area of work  

• build relationships and find ways to collaborate   

• find out about available support services.   

We actively promote the digital community through our monthly well-being update and across our wider network. We also regularly feature it in shared resources to make sure it’s visible and accessible.

We recognise that well-being is a thread across many of the digital communities we run. This year, we presented to the Responsible Individuals Community and the Evidence Community to help them better understand the connections between their work and well-being at work. Going forward, we’re looking at ways to increase engagement and make the space even more interactive and reflective of member needs.

Our well-being network continues to be an important channel for engaging the social care workforce and sharing information about well-being at work. The network now has 219 members across a range of roles and organisations, reflecting steady growth and a sustained effort in improving and supporting the workforce.

We use the network to:

• share timely and relevant information about well-being in the workplace

• promote learning opportunities and events hosted by us and partner organisations

• share a monthly update, including resources, good practice examples, and news from across the sector

• hold a face-to-face well-being network event, with the focus on creating a positive workplace culture. We shared examples of good practice and people had the opportunity to connect.

In 2025 to 2026, we will be focussing on:

• strengthening our work with partners so we can do more to support the well-being of the sector, including through our work to support positive cultures

• offering our programme of well-being information sessions, with topics reflecting what we learn from surveys, research and evidence

• developing the well-being network further, so members can share best practice with each other

• reviewing and refreshing the well-being framework so it’s as useful and relevant as possible

• developing and sharing ways of working that are based on evidence. This will improve the quality of work relationships, so people feel supported, valued and recognised.

To find out more about our work, or to join our well-being network, get in touch with us on wellbeing@socialcare.wales

You can find out more about workplace well-being on our well-being webpages.