New Ideas for the Skills Credit Crunch

A little bit about Sector Skills Councils They represent employers and learners needs in a variety of skills areas They had previously been funded from Government as quangos through a core grant This grant enabled them to represent employers in terms of qualifications, National Occupational Standards etc The funding is now moving from grant funding to “contested funding”

Skills for Care and Development is the Sector Skills Council for Social Care and Early Years

Now for the science bit! In the next 30 years those over 65 will have almost doubled, those over 85 increased by one third The number of family carers under 65 will have reduced In the next 30 years the number of people with dementia will double to 1.4 million Increased life expectancy for people with Downes Syndrome

More trends Every day social care and children’s services gives support to 5 million people One of the positives of this is that women’s participation in employment has risen from 56% in 1971 to 70% in 2005

The recent Dilnot Report into the cost of social care in England concluded; “It is clear as a country we will need to provide more care and support”

How do we meet this challenge? “You cannot meet today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions” Van Oeik

Projects which employers said they supported Mobile Learning Solutions Recruiting a World class Workforce Improving Business Sustainability through Inter- employer Networks

Continued… Making qualifications work for business Learn from Learning – comparison website and tool-kit Supporting employers with the workforce implications of Assistive technologies

Keep our fingers crossed The bids were submitted at the beginning of September They are currently being examined The results will be known on 17 th November

This is Social Care’s time….. The demographics show that social care is coming into its own There are multiple examples of excellence We need to explore new ways of doing things We need to look at new ways of getting funding i.e. social enterprise We need to have a “demand-led” qualification supply

And finally…… We need work towards care being recognised as a priority skills area We need social care to be high on the DHSSPS and DEL agendas Government needs to see Social Care as contributing to the Economy of NI As the sector skills council representative at NISCC, I would look forward to working with the sector to achieve this