News & Events

The ​UK recognises the value of overseas workers in the health and social care workforce but acknowledges that recent changes in immigration visas and staff shortages have increased the risk of modern slavery and unethical international recruitment practices. The ​Care Quality Commission (CQC) supports the government's objective to eradicate modern slavery and human trafficking but lacks direct authority to investigate or enforce actions in these areas. However, the organisation plans to align with the ​Human Rights Act and use its regulatory powers to take action against providers posing risks of harm and breaches of regulations. The CQC will routinely assess providers' management of modern slavery risks and well-being of internationally recruited staff. It expects providers to have safeguarding policies, effective recruitment processes, and respond sensitively to potential cases of modern slavery. The CQC also outlines a series of steps it will take if it identifies or receives information indicating modern slavery, including referrals and collaboration with other agencies. Additionally, the CQC works with national organisations to address root causes and reduce the likelihood of modern slavery and unethical recruitment practices in health and social care settings.

To read the full report please visit the CQC website

With it being pride month, we wanted to showcase some of the work the Inspired to Care team has been doing to make sure those who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community know how crucial and important they are to the adult social care sector.

To help educate our members David from our team put together a presentation to explain gender identity which has been presented through our networks in social care and goes through why it is important to make this part of our everyday language to improve the care we provide and make our colleagues feel comfortable at work.

Feel free to share this presentation with colleagues to raise awareness and promote our sector as a place that welcomes everyone.

Inspired to care's objectives were to improve the image of adult social care, work with the workforce of the future and retain/develop the existing workforce.

So, how did they improve the image of social care? One of the things they did was hold the 'Care Professional of the year' awards. This was proved to be successful earning 155 nominations. Inspired to Care also created the #SocialCareSuccess campaign which had 3845 views. After engaging more with their audience on social media, they had accomplished a total of 69,874 views on all their social media posts in total.

To work more with the workforce of the future, 'Inspired to Care' have attended a total of 100 career events and mock interviews at schools with which around 2487 students have engaged with. In partnership with Florence Academy they have created a Level 1 entry qualification which Prince's Trust are using with all their students today. Also, they are supporting a values based psychometric recruitment tool with York University.

To retain and develop the workforce, the organisation have held 6 topic conferences this year which received a 95% positive feedback. They also created a new recruiters programme which has supported 15 recruiters in a year long programme. 'Inspired to Care' has held wellbeing events which is important to keep a workforce motivated, with 56 providers supporting it and 158 providers were supported with 1-1 direct support.

This year has been a busy one! We wanted to give you the rundown of the team's achievements throughout 2022!

The Inspired to Care website

We have continued to develop the external ITC website, keeping case studies and information up to date for both front facing and member resources. We have achieved this by developing our own new pages for news and reorganised the section within the public facing site to support our education partners including a new feature to 'book us' which has proved to be very successful with 80% of our external events coming through this new form.

Within our members area we have continued to grow to our resources to help support and grow our members recruitment and retention practices. Our resources include new toolkits which come as part of our bimonthly topic conferences such as our 'art of social media' event, 'health and wellbeing' conference and soon to be our upcoming event based on overseas recruitment! We have had over 120 downloads of our main toolkit which has exceeded any in previous years.

Social Media

Since starting our KPIs in April this year we have achieved via our social media channels the following impressions (views).

Facebook impressions have reached 18,300. The LinkedIn blogs based on the work we have been completing and progress we are making have proved very successful. There have been 114,000 impressions and 103,000 Instagram impressions. This has created extra traffic onto our job page boards and has created over 300 candidate leads.

We have seen increasing requests for support using social media, as a result we ran a social media topic conference. This received 100% positive feedback so we will run another one next year!

Care Professionals of the Year Awards

Each year we hold the Care Professionals of the Year Awards to recognise the outstanding work being done in the social care sector throughout Leicester and Leicestershire. This year we received a record number 155 nominations for our categories. For the first time ever, we organised the event completely without the aid of external events planning and it has proven to be a huge success. We held the awards on November the 24^th 2022 at the Leicester racecourse with 150 attendees. The night was a complete success with positive feedback from those who attended. You can see a gallery of photos from the event on our website gallery

Engaging with the future workforce

One of our main goals is to engage providers and ambassador network to deliver taster sessions for prospective care applicants, providing engagement with people who use the service and providing a fair reflection on what a career in care will entail in an interactive and engaging way. This is offered as part of a work experience package especially in schools and colleges offering health and social care courses, delivering training to people at a younger age.

We currently have 40 ambassadors from the sector working in a wide variety of settings.

We are currently working with the Leicester, Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership (LLEP) on a new project called 'unbox your future' which is a work experience programme for young people with special educational needs and disabilities. We are working in partnership with one of our members Enabled Inclusive support Ltd who will be offering work experience as part of the program.

We have attended on average, 1 college/career event each week during September and October this year. These events have been offered as part of a work experience package with bespoke presentations.

Members

We currently have 143 organisations and 363 settings enrolled within the county area and 84 organisations covering 124 settings within the city.

98 provider support consultation have been held within the county and over 80 within the city including new registrations and catch-up meetings from April to October 2022.

Trans Awareness Week 13th - 19th November

Why is it so important to celebrate diversity within adult social care?

Well the simple answer to that is, the adult social care sector supports everybody who needs it, regardless of there sexuality, gender, race or they choose to identify as. Everyone is entitled to the support that enables them to live full and enriched lives.

Why should your recruitment reflect the diversity of those that require your services?

It's important we recruit diversely to make sure the needs of a diverse client base are met. When we are trying to deliver any type of care in a person centred fashion, the diversity of the users of your services being reflected within your workforce, will make clients feel valued and show your business take inclusivity, seriously..

That's great but how do I start being more diverse when recruiting?

-Education - Research the community your setting is serving.
-Talking - Speak to your current staff base to find out more about them, their backgrounds, culture and beliefs.
-Think - where are you advertising your vacancies? Are there any local groups you could advertise within?

Have a look into the National Equality Standards and see how you can achieve their kite mark as an employer.

Could you be a Disability Confident Employer? If you are Inspired to care member, you can visit the members section of our website to find out more.

At Inspired to care HQ, we have been taking some time today to consider why it is so important we continue with our hard work in improving the image of adult social care as well increasing the public awareness of our sector and how we achieve this.

Across the board, we know so many industries are facing a recruitment crisis, none more so than adult social care but few have the same stigma and myths attached.

Adult social care is an industry made up of dedicated, empathic and hardworking individuals, not just on the front line but behind the scenes as well, making it an industry with roles available at all levels and suiting so many skill sets.

But the one thing everyone in the sector has in common is who they are supporting. From the elderly to those living with additional needs, all need the support of another individual to live full and enriched lives.

So how does improving the image of the sector help those already here?

We want people in this sector to feel valued and we want the public to realise and appreciate the invaluable work they do. By increasing awareness and shining a positive light on the industry, our existing workforce will feel more valued and their work will be more widely recognised, this will help us to retain them. We lose too many wonderful care professionals are lost to other industries 😢

New recruits, with the right core values, will be drawn to an industry where a well recognised, valued and rewarding role is on offer.

So how can we all help with this? Well firstly, don't be shy to share the work your wonderful care professionals are carrying out everyday, using #socialcaresuccess.

Start a conversation about adult social care! If you aren't part of the sector you can still help by talking to those around you to see how the industry may have touched your employees, colleagues, friends and family.

Be proud to be part of the sector! Some of the Inspired to care team have come from front line roles and couldn't be more proud of where they started their careers!

And last of all work together! Lets try and unite as an industry in what ever ways possible and tackle the challenges we face, together 💚