The BBC's horrible figures on social care staff turnover
The BBC has some horrible figures about the numbers of social care workers who quit each year:
More than 900 adult social care workers a day quit their job in England last year, figures reveal, as homecare providers warn the adult social care system has begun to collapse.
Analysis by the BBC of data released by a charity, Skills for Care, shows that in 2015-16 about 338,520 adult social care workers left their roles, equal to 928 people leaving their job every day. There were more than 1.3 million people employed in the adult social care sector in England in the period.
Such bald numbers don't mean very much, what we want to know is the rate:
The Skills for Care figures show that the industry has a staff turnover rate of 27%, which is nearly twice the average for other professions in the UK, according to the BBC report.
Profession? This is not being a social worker, this is the essential tasks of aid with bathing, bottom wiping and so on. Essential, entirely so, but not exactly a profession.
Still, what we want to know is how this compares with other occupations. What, for example, is the variance between different ones across the economy? Fortunately, that is already information collected.
And as it happens that turnover in social are is, at 27%, fractionally higher than that in leisure and hospitality at 25.9%. Two low paid jobs which require little in the way of qualifications or training - other than the basic human attributes of a bit of empathy and so on - have rather similar turnover rates.
This is a surprise to whom and why?