More than two thirds (71%) of adult social care providers say they find the current workforce recruitment situation ‘challenging’ and 37% are concerned about sustaining current levels of service delivery over the next six months, according to new figures released by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

The Adult Social Care Recruitment and Retention Workforce Survey was a voluntary survey completed by Care Quality Commission (CQC)-registered adult social care residential care and domiciliary care settings via Capacity Tracker.

The survey ran for one month from 19 August to 19 September 2024 and responses were received from 4,913 provider locations, with a higher number and proportion of responses from domiciliary care settings.

Respondents said the primary challenge to both recruitment and retention is better pay outside the adult social care sector (27.8% and 35.2% respectively).

And domiciliary care settings reported greater recruitment and retention challenges than residential care settings.

In domiciliary care settings, 74% responded that recruitment was challenging, and 58.5% reported the same for retention.

In comparison, 66.7% of residential care settings found recruitment challenging, and 53.9% reported retention difficulties.

These workforce pressures may be linked to staff morale, with 46.1% of domiciliary care settings reporting low morale, compared with 41.4% in residential care settings.

But less than 1% of respondents answered that recruiting social workers, occupational therapists, and nursing associates has become more challenging compared with last year, suggesting the issue is not getting worse, although the problems remain ongoing.

When asked about their recent experience with accessing agency staff, and how it compared with the same period last year, 58.4% of respondents reported a positive experience. Additionally, 65.6% noted no change in access compared with last year, with more respondents reporting an improvement than a deterioration.

Meanwhile, 54.5% of residential care locations and 45.1% of domiciliary care settings showed no concerns about recruiting internationally over the next six months.

Respondents selected complexity and expense as the most-important barriers to sponsoring visas for international workers, both within, and outside of, the UK.

The survey results also showed 53% of the provider locations which responded reported positive staff morale, with most indicating no change or improvement since last year.

Domiciliary care settings reported more challenges with morale compared with residential care locations.

A DHSC spokesman said: “There were concerns that a fall in the number of entry visa grants for care workers and senior care workers would impact workforce capacity over winter 2024.

“A survey was launched to understand perceptions of recruitment and retention within the sector in the run up to winter 2024 and to check whether existing data sources were failing to capture real impacts.

“The results highlight challenges, particularly in recruiting and retaining staff.

“Recruitment remains the biggest workforce challenge, with a large majority indicating they were currently struggling to hire staff.”

The survey reveals the main causes of staff leaving care providers are better pay and better hours available elsewhere, outside work commitments, lack of flexibility in hours worked, cost or distance of travel to work, and migration issues.

Key barriers to recruitment and retention include levels of pay compared to other sectors, access to childcare support, access to funding to pay for childcare support, DBS checks taking too long, access to transport, and immigration rule changes.