Retaining our staff is one of the most important things we can all do, and there’s many things that add up to healthy, happy staff that stay with you in their vocation for as long as possible.
Best practice examples and advice in retaining staff
Funding
- Workforce Development Fund - Adult social care employers can claim money from the Workforce Development Fund towards the cost of workers completing a broad range of adult social care qualifications, learning programmes and digital learning modules. The Workforce Development Fund (WDF) is funding from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) disseminated by Skills for Care. To claim funding an organisation must provide an adult social care service and directly employ care staff within England
Looking after you and your staff
In addition to the health and wellbeing support and financial wellness support available to all social care staff, this page outlines the local and national support available to you as managers, leaders and supervisors.
Skills for Care support for manager wellbeing resources include:
- Supporting Leaders (793 KB) - Help and advice and how to support yourself and others as leaders from Skills for Care- Presented at the launch of the Staffordshire Social Care Workforce Strategy in 2023.
- Registered Manager webinars - a series of wellbeing webinars for managers and teams.
- Peer support for registered managers - Groups and forums
- Five ways to wellbeing – a blog for registered managers, starting with you.
- Wellbeing information cards - bitesize information and support that work well on your mobile devices
- Wellbeing for registered managers - a bite sized practical guide
- Chat with registered managers – advice line, Facebooks groups, WhatsApp groups and more
- Skills for Care guide for nominated individuals - Skills for Care has developed a new comprehensive guide aimed at nominated individuals, which provides practical advice and signposts to other resources and support available to help you. It considers key aspects of your role and shares top tips, so you continue to provide high-quality, person-centred care to the people you support.
Going digital and innovating
Embracing more digital technology helps social care in many ways, including:
- improving the quality of care
- being transparent and accountable
- supporting individuals to be as independent as possible for longer
- improving the quality and efficiency of information sharing between health and social care.
Latest support from Digital Social Care:
- A digital framework for staff training
- Find out more from Digital Social Care
- What digital working in adult social care looks like: Government Guidance
Assistive Technology support from Happy at Home
Tell us your great news
We know there is great work being done, day in day out by your teams. We want to tell their stories, celebrate their successes and share best practise.
Help your staff to feel valued and recognised by telling us what’s going well. You and your staff do amazing things, and everyone should feel positive about the work you do. So, tell us about them!
We’ll share their success with colleagues around the county, so we can help others understand what social care in Staffordshire is all about.
If you’ve got good news to share, fill in this template with just a few details (should take no more than five minutes), email it to clare.abbotts@staffordshire.gov.uk and we’ll be in touch!
Here’s just some of the people that we’ve already showcased. Watch their stories
Promoting your work and the workforce partnership
We have developed a brand that accompanies the workforce strategy and can also be used by partners.
Find out more about using the Staffordshire Social Care Workforce branding to help your organisation