Personal Social Services: Staff of Social Services Departments, England 2019

Publication, Part of Personal Social Services: Staff of Social Services Departments

National statistics

Publication Date:: 27 Feb 2020
Geographic Coverage:: England
Geographical Granularity:: Local Authorities, Councils with Adult Social Services Responsibilities (CASSRs)
Date Range:: 01 Oct 2018 to 30 Sep 2019

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Personal Social Services: Staff of Social Services Departments, England 2019

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Classification of Statistics

Summary

This publication contains information on 113,300 jobs for people employed by all 151 local authority adult social services departments in England as at September 2019.

In previous years there were 152 local authorities. However, on the 1st April 2019 Bournemouth and Poole merged to form the new Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) local authority. The inclusion of Christchurch has also reduced the size of the Dorset local authority. Therefore, care should be taken when making comparisons over time for Dorset due to such changes; when considering any changes at local authority level in this publication, these have been done on a like for like basis, excluding these two authorities.

Key Facts

Total number of jobs

As at September 2019 there were 113,300 adult social services jobs in local authorities in England (held by 109,600 people), up 0.9% or 1,000 jobs from 2018. This is the second year on year increase since reporting began in 2011 and is broadly stable since 2016. Between 2011 and 2019 there has been a decrease of 28.9% or 46,100 local authority jobs.

Jobs by job role group

Nearly half of all local authority job roles (52,500 jobs or 46.3%) were in direct care providing roles. The Professional job group, which includes Social Workers and Occupational Therapists has remained relatively stable, currently reporting 21,100 roles. This is the only job role group to have increased since 2011, also up 1,300 jobs between 2018 and 2019.

Hours worked

In 2019 an estimated 3.4 million hours per week were worked by 109,600 adult social care staff within local authorities, up 25,000 hours per week since 2018.

Age of workforce

The average age of adult social care staff in local authorities is 47.5. This is 4.3 years older when compared to the latest available equivalent for the independent sector (Skills for Care, 2019) and 4.6 years older than the NHS workforce average age.

Sickness

42.2% of directly employed staff had zero sick days in the year. On average, the mean number of sickness days for staff in local authorities is 10.2 days, down 0.1 days since 2018 and 5.8 days more than the UK employment average.