Page 33 - Carmarthenshire Skills Report 2024

Current Landscape
When looking into the data for Health & Social Care
it is prudent to look back to pre-pandemic and not
make assumptions based on the disruption this
caused during 2020 & 21. Therefore, looking back
to 2018/19 for comparable staffing levels is
prudent.
Health and Social Care is one of the largest
employment sectors within the South West Wales
region employing over 46,000 workers, with Care
Workers and Nurses being the highest volume jobs.
In Carmarthenshire the sector represents around
20% of the labour market (circa 14,000 people)
The NHS being the largest single employer, but
95% of the employers in the sector are small or
micro and these make up a large share of other
important health requirement services such as
Dentistry, Care, Welfare and Cleaners etc, most of
which are showing a decline in jobs.
In Carmarthenshire, the largest job group in the
sector is Care Workers and Home Carers with over
2000 current active roles. However, since 2018 there
has been a 22% decline in jobs. Senior Care workers
and Care Home Managers roles are also in decline,
combine these roles together and the county has
circa 550 less workers in care than in 2018.
Employers are struggling to recruit to fill the gap
left, In 2023 job adverts for carers were listed up to
18 times before they were filled.
Nursing jobs have increased since 2018 and
showing good growth, HDUHB have had a
workforce strategy in place, and this seems to be
paying dividends with an increase of healthcare
apprenticeships during 2023. Although this is good
news, nursing roles continue to be hard to recruit,
with job adverts being placed up to 11 times before
they are filled. Much of this issue is down to Welsh
Language (WL) stipulation in job adverts. Where WL
is required, jobs are advertised up to 16 times
before they are filled, vs WL not required, only
advertised 5 times. LMI suggests that WL is present
in around 22% of all job adverts for the sector, yet
very rarely contained as a skill in workforce
application profiles.
Jobs in childcare are also increasing, coupled with
the increased numbers for Work Based Learning
childcare courses in 2023. This indicates that
government intervention on childcare cost support
seems to be driving this growth.
Health & Social Care
With an ageing population in the county, (a
quarter of the population now at age 65 and
above and a median average age of 46) this can
potentially have multiple impacts on the sector
in terms of the reduction of the next generation
talent pool, filling the retirement gaps and
managing to deliver key H&SC services to an
older demographic which will likely place extra
burden on the services.
Workforce Strategies such as Hywel Dda
University Health Board (HDUHB) example
clearly make a difference, and the sector should
pick up this good practice.
Couple this with recent reports of waiting lists
being the highest on record for Wales 1 (Figure
1) and lagging a long way behind England,1
skills & recruitment has to be placed at the
heart of any measure to mitigate these risks.
33
Although Pandemic effects can be attributed to
the increased waiting times, we can also see a
direct correlation between waiting time
increases and the 7.4% reduction of H&SC staff
in Wales since 2018, this does not imply cause
and effect, but it is clearly a contributing factor.
Figure 1
1 NHS Wales waiting lists highest on record - BBC News
LMI Data: Lightcast 2024