LocalGov talks to ADASS President Phil Holmes about the social care workforce crisis, what the Prime Minister's reform plans need to deliver, and why it's time to move beyond the language of crisis.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham's announcement this week that he wants to turn social care's fair pay agreement into a ‘bigger reform’ of the workforce, and his call for cross-party talks to break decades of political stalemate, marks one of the most significant moments in adult social care policy in years. For Phil Holmes, President of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), it is a moment he has been waiting for. ‘After decades in which adult social care has been left unresolved by successive governments, the Prime Minister's willingness to face this difficult but necessary work head on is the leadership the sector has been asking for,’ Holmes said, responding to Burnham's speech.
He was equally warm about Baroness Louise Casey, whose review of social care Burnham has asked to be brought forward by a year. ‘Baroness Casey has similarly been a revelation in her strong and principled leadership, zeroing in relentlessly on what matters most.’
It is the Big Conversation on Care, the public engagement platform Casey launched this week, that Holmes believes could prove decisive where previous reform attempts have stalled. ‘Previous discussions about reform have foundered on issues of funding and organisational leadership without first having established what care actually means to people as they seek to live well and to age well,’ he said.
A workforce under strain
Behind the political announcements sits a workforce that ADASS's own research shows is still under significant pressure, even as the headline numbers show tentative signs of improvement. ‘The adult social care workforce continues to face significant recruitment and retention challenges, despite some recent improvements in vacancy rates,’ Holmes told LocalGov. Turnover remains high among frontline care staff, and the sector's reliance on international recruitment continues to grow just as the number of British workers in social care keeps falling – a trend Holmes says has been worsened by recent changes to international recruitment rules.
The scale of the challenge ahead is stark. Skills for Care projects the sector will need 410,000 additional workers by 2040. ADASS's own Spring Survey found that around half of directors are concerned or extremely concerned about the financial pressures created by high vacancy rates on their 2026/27 budgets, and every region reported that restrictions on international recruitment were having a negative impact.
The knock-on effects reach directly into councils' statutory duties. ‘Workforce pressures can affect councils in several ways such as increased difficulty sourcing care packages, particularly home care, resulting in delays to assessments being translated into support,’ Holmes explained. Commissioning teams and provider markets come under greater strain, agency spending rises, and preventative, strengths-based approaches – the kind of early intervention that keeps people out of hospital and living independently for longer – get squeezed out as resources are diverted to managing immediate risk. Gaps also open up in the regulated workforce, including social workers and occupational therapists employed directly by councils, creating what Holmes calls ‘significant challenges in managing our statutory responsibilities around assessments in particular.’
It is not all bleak, though. Holmes points to growing take-up of social work and occupational therapy apprenticeship degrees as a genuine bright spot, and ADASS's Spring Survey data shows that while provider workforce shortages are contributing to service hand-backs to councils, it is a contributing factor rather than the dominant one – 43% of directors said it had contributed ‘to some extent.’
Changing the story
If there is one thing Holmes wants to change about how social care is discussed nationally, it is the language used to describe it. ‘We need to move beyond the language of crisis,’ he said. ‘People working in adult social care do great work every day, making a difference up and down the country. The issue is they, like people who need care, are all too often having to swim against the tide of our health and care system.’
That framing extends to how the sector talks about careers within it. Holmes argues that public understanding of what a job in social care actually involves is badly out of date. ‘There is often a perception that social care is a narrow field with limited progression, when in reality it offers diverse career pathways, opportunities to develop specialist expertise, leadership roles, and the chance to make a significant difference to people's lives and communities.’
He is critical of the way social care has often been discussed publicly purely in terms of NHS bed-blocking and cost, calling it unhelpful to the task of attracting new entrants, and wants to see a properly funded, sustained recruitment campaign along the lines of the Ministry of Defence's – something more ambitious than DHSC's existing campaign, whose impact he says remains unclear.
What councils can and can't do alone
Holmes is candid that local authorities cannot fix pay and conditions on their own. ‘Councils cannot resolve recruitment and retention challenges without wider national investment in pay and conditions,’ he said. But he sees a substantial role for councils in market shaping, commissioning and system leadership – using contracts to incentivise providers to invest in their own workforce, and promoting social care as a career choice through the routes councils already influence directly.
Success and the risks of inaction
Asked what success would look like in twelve months, Holmes is clear that there is no single fix. ‘Success will require action on pay, professional recognition, career development and provider sustainability,’ he said, warning that rising employment costs – from National Living Wage increases and wider reforms – mean funding must keep pace with ambition, or service capacity will suffer. He wants to see the Care Workforce Pathway accelerated and made easier to navigate, and, ultimately, a fully funded long-term workforce plan for social care to match the one already in place for the NHS.
For now, Holmes says ADASS is ready to work with both the Prime Minister and Baroness Casey to turn this week's announcements into lasting change. ‘The Prime Minister is clearly determined to change the tide,’ he said, ‘and ADASS looks forward to continuing to work with both the Prime Minister and Baroness Casey to make this happen.’
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