The severely disabled man who has no one to cook him dinner.
The daughter who can’t get respite from her father’s dementia.
These are the victims of the 165,000 vacancies in our broken social care system, which the government promised to fix two years ago with a £500 million workforce plan. But in April that was slashed to £250 million and the government is still yet to commit to a long-term workforce plan to meet the needs of our growing elderly population.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is championing apprenticeships as the way forward. Its 2021 white paper on social care reform pledged to “support apprenticeship growth, address barriers and increase quality”, promising “hundreds of thousands of training places” in care.
