Social Value and Social Care

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Perhaps you wanted to be a train driver or a nurse, maybe you wanted to be a famous sports star or singer, or even, possibly, you wanted to be a princess or a pirate.

The chances are that the idea of being a social care worker did not enter your head.

Then as you got older and you discovered your talents and abilities your dreams will have changed, more professional ambitions may have come to mind, accountancy, medicine, architect, law etc. Perhaps, you were more vocationally minded, and liked the idea of a more hands on job, beauty therapist, mechanic, hairdresser, electrician etc.

The chances are that the idea of being a social care worker did not enter your head.

The fact that social care is well down the list of career choices is also backed up by the facts. The Skills for Care National Minimum Data Set (NMDS) shows that 60% of social care workers are aged 35 or over with just 10% under the age of 24. Social care is a job that people enter into later in life.

The issue with social care is how we value it in society and even though they provide essential front line services for vulnerable people, social care workers are low on social value.

Part of the issue is invisibility in society. Yes we have seemingly endless negative reporting, but generally speaking adult social care only becomes important to individuals when they, or a loved one, needs care services. In popular media social care is often portrayed negatively and infrequently, when fictional programmes portray social care as either inefficient or outright failing. Even where we have had mainstream fiction about care (i.e. Waiting for God) the care staff were not portrayed particularly well.

High social value needs positive role models through mainstream media and fiction often carries more weight than factual programmes. Fiction carries archetypes that embed themselves in social awareness (you’d be surprised how many people think the ‘medieval’ stories of King Arthur are true!) and in order to raise the social value of social care we need more positive archetypes of social care work portrayed through fiction.

That does not mean that non-fiction media doesn’t have a role to play. We increasingly need positive social care stories to underpin the social value of social care. Unfortunately the mainstream media seems adverse to the positive side of social care, which is strange as more and more of their viewers/readers will need social care services or know someone who needs social care services and the relaying of the negative horror stories and experiences, that are not suffered by the majority of care users, undermine the whole system. Yes it is important that these are exposed yet the overall impact has a detrimental effect and probably puts a lot of people off the idea of working in social care.

Social care is important in today’s (and tomorrow’s) society. Increasing longevity combined with a larger population means that social care services are needed more than ever before and more and more people are needed to provide that care. We need to raise the social value of social care, raise awareness in society of social cares importance in society and we need positive role models to encourage people to consider a career in social care.

Raise the Social Value of Social Care

“Why is it you need a degree to get a job in fashion, but when it comes to looking after our most vulnerable members of society any one with no qualifications can get a job as a support worker?” (Guest Blogger, Whose Shoes: http://wp.me/p1enjT-tu )

The above quote highlights one of the intrinsic issues facing social care in today’s society and that is the social value of care services. Whilst the Government will focus on than who actually pays for social care, rather than the actual cost of care services and others focus on the quality of care services provided, yet perhaps where we need to start is changing the view of the wider population to view social care as an essential service, as essential as health given the demographic trends, and a view that social care is there to enhance life rather than be the beginning of the end of life process.

Social Care is not a highly rated career choice. Be honest and ask yourself would you encourage your son or daughter to pursue a career in social care? While many people, when asked, will state that they admire care workers and the work that they do, I suspect that many parents would not be encouraging their children to undertake such a low-paid, low esteem job role. This is, perhaps, reflected in the demographics of social care workers with those aged between 18 & 24 making up around 14% of the workforce and even if we include those up to the age of 34 we still only get to 36% of the workforce. In other words, two-thirds of care workers are aged 35 or above.

This rather suggests, although I can find no research to back it up, that social care work is a career of opportunity, i.e. a matter of what is available when needing a job in later life, rather than a deliberate career choice.

Yet, surely, caring for those in most need in society should be a job that is celebrated and regarded as an important role in our society, one that is rewarded appropriately in accordance with the gravitas associated with the work role.

Another, yet highly connected, issue in terms of valuing social care is that the seeming denial of many people when it comes to their own future and the potential need for care services in the future. Naturally none of us like to think about the possibility of getting old or suffering from some form of dementia and that denial leads to people ignoring the idea of social care until such time that it touches their lives. People do not want to think about being reliant on others to help them through their daily lives and, subsequently, do not think about the type of person they would want to deliver that care.

The same type of denial applies to other types of social care. If it does not directly impact on the life of a person they tend to ignore the issues of those with learning disabilities or mental health issues.

The forthcoming White Paper needs to do more than make technical changes to the current system, it needs to reach out to those not yet affected by the need for social care services and highlight that social care is about everyone’s future not just about those who need services now.

Raising the social value of social care is vitally important and needs to be the priority of Government Policy