The social care sector is losing £78m per year due to high employee turnover rates, the sector skills council for care has announced.
In the 12 months prior to April 2007, 16,000 care workers left their employer, with at least half of these leaving the sector completely. A report published by the care council, named Skills for Care, said it had worked out the multi-million pound loss based on the cost of training care workers at around £980 each, and based on a workforce of 1.2 million.
In addition to lost investment in training, “replacement costs have to be borne”, the council said.
“Retaining staff is paramount for service users, because the relationship is one of the most important factors in service user satisfaction,” the Skills for Care report said.
The report also highlighted a 19.3% turnover rate for the adult care sector, and a 24.9% turnover rate for domiciliary care.
But the report said this was not necessarily down to temporary staff leaving the profession: “These high rates are not a result of high levels of temporary and casual employment. Of the employees recorded at April 2007, 95% were permanent.”
Earlier this year, charity Age Concern urged the government to provide more training and better career paths to entice workers to stay in the profession.
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