It was not the stuff of banner headlines. Potentially dodgy economic dossiers took that particular crown. But Alistair Darling’s Budget day announcement of 50,000 new traineeships in social care for unemployed young people
— part of a package aimed at creating a quarter of a million jobs — was a substantive footnote to the economic stories.
The chancellor made £75m available to the thousands of statutory and voluntary social care providers for offering sustained employment and training to people aged 18—24 who have been out of work for 12 months.
In effect, each social care employer is to be given £1,500 to take on the training of a young person. Darling’s Care First plans, which have been warmly welcomed by social care organisations, appear to offer a genuinely imaginative, if somewhat late-in-the-day, solution to three pressing anxieties.
First is the alarming growth in youth unemployment, which currently stands at 621,000, or 14.6% — its highest level for 15 years. The real figure is probably nearer 1.5 million because the jobless statistics do not include 16 to 18-year-olds, the so-called Neets. Controversial plans to raise the compulsory school leaving age to 18 might make less of a difference than state-subsidised creation of genuinely meaningful work.
Secondly, there is the urgent need for more and improved social care, a problem the government seems to have been examining for years now. An ageing population brings extended years of fraility and dependence that need to be matched by a skilled, inevitably younger workforce.
The third anxiety is one partly of the government’s making: the general crisis in the image of social work. Since what many see as a precipitate rush to judgement in the Baby P case and the summary sacking of Haringey social services chief Sharon Shoesmith, social work recruitment levels have dropped to a new crisis low. Recent reports claim that one in seven social worker posts is now vacant.
A recent survey, initiated by the Conservative Party — it has to be said, not previously famed for its support of the profession — found a 30% rise in vacancies within councils since 2005. Haringey has a quarter of posts unfilled.
Opposition spokesman Tim Loughton has recently talked of ‘demoralised and exhausted experts’ leaving the profession with fewer younger people coming in ‘to fill their shoes’.
The reputation of other social care sectors has not fared much better. Mention ‘care homes for elderly people’ and these days it is most likely to summon up images of wonky camera angles and breathless undercover reporters giving details of confused elderly residents stinking of urine and plonked all day in front of the TV. How many young people would even think of a professional future in such an area of work?
So, Darling’s plan is welcome for all these reasons and more. It will certainly help councils like the one that, just weeks before the chancellor’s statement, announced on its website that due to ‘budgetary pressures’ the authority was ceasing all recruitment to social work traineeships for the year 2009/10.
It’s not clear yet how the Care First scheme will help such hard-pressed councils. When asked earlier this week, a cross-section of authorities — in the Northeast, Southwest and in London — were barely aware of the scheme. But a spokeswoman for one London council said: ‘There is a growing demand for competent care workers (so) this could be a very good thing depending on which areas they were trained in.’
Melissa Benn is a writer and journalist
