A new UK government-funded strategy intended to encourage a major expansion of social care placements for student nurses has been launched.
It is intended to give student nurses structured, routine access to placements in residential care, supported living and home care settings – providing experience in community-based care.
“Working in social care can be an incredible career, but we know there are limited opportunities for students to secure a placement”
Claire Sutton
The strategy has been developed by Skills for Care, working in partnership with the Council of Deans of Health and with funding from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
The document, published on 23 July, is described as a “strategy to enable social care placements for student nurses and nursing associates”.
It sets out the need for greater numbers of student nurses and nursing associates to take university placements, or apprenticeships, in social care.
To be a success, however, the new strategy must be backed by support for the social care sector, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said in response.
The plan contains recommendations for placement and education providers on topics such as promoting social care as a career to nurses, expanding placement capacity and improving recruitment pipelines in the sector. It has four broad aims:
Understand the opportunities that social care has to offer
Facilitate access to practice placement opportunities in social care
Maintain and grow the quality and capacity of social care practice placements
Increase students’ understanding of social care and inspire them to work in the sector
Currently, the majority of student placements take place in NHS settings, such as hospitals, despite some local examples of successful placements in other settings.
However, the government is hoping to reorientate the health and social care system away from hospitals and into the community, as stated in its recently published 10 Year Health Plan.
As part of this ongoing work, it commissioned arms’-length body Skills for Care to produce the new strategy.
Introducing the document, care care minister Stephen Kinnock said he hoped it could lay the groundwork for nurses to see social care as a “rewarding and impactful career choice”.
The first section centred around making the case to students that social care is a viable career option, and called on universities, colleges and social care providers to provide more information and promotion.
It also called for the strengthening of relationships between organisations in the education and provider sectors.
Elsewhere in the strategy, it was stated that nurse should be “inspired” to work in social care and that raising the profile of social care should be something of concern to everyone involved in the sector.
It did not state how exactly capacity for placements would be increased, from a provider perspective, against a background of severe funding difficulties facing local authorities, which typically fund social care.
However, one of the recommendations called for adult social care stakeholders to support “reforms to clinical placement tariffs for undergraduate and postgraduate medicine, as well as a targeted expansion of clinical educator capacity”, which were objectives stated in the 10 Year Health Plan.
In addition, Skills for Care’s new plan stated that there must be more investment in career pathways “leading to adult social care”, such as T-levels, internships and other areas of education.
Furthermore, the plan called for the overall “development of the social care workforce” and the pipelines into the profession, and warned that this should be a “shared concern for all stakeholders”.
Universities and other higher education institutions, meanwhile, must do their part by providing clear information for placement providers on approval, payment and contact arrangements, it said.
The plan also called for the bolstering of the social care sector in the long term, to take advantage of a potential influx of nursing graduates, through improvements to preceptorship programmes in social care.
Skills for Care chief executive Oonagh Smyth said: “This strategy will offer future graduates into the health and care system a clear understanding of how people drawing on care and support access health and care services.
“The skill and expertise of care professionals working in people’s own homes and communities offers rewarding learning and development opportunities across the breadth of nursing education programmes.
“This strategy gives much needed recognition of the complexity, professional autonomy and leadership of nursing roles in social care,” she said.
The strategy was broadly welcomed by the RCN, but the college warned that the government needed to better support both the social care and education sectors to achieve its goals.
“Working in social care can be an incredible career, but we know there are limited opportunities for students to secure a placement,” said Claire Sutton, the RCN’s head of independent health and social care.
“This strategy is a welcome step in the right direction which can attract new nurses into the sector, help address widespread nursing vacancies and support the shift to community.
But she added: “This strategy is set against a backdrop of falling registered nurse numbers in social care, the very expert professionals needed to support new student placements.
“We will need to see joined-up work between government, providers and education institutions to ensure every nursing student on placement receives the best learning experience,” said Ms Sutton.
Professor Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, said: “Today’s strategy marks a vital and visionary step forward which we wholeheartedly support.
“Nursing in social care is uniquely complex, skilled, and deeply human; it demands clinical expertise, leadership, and compassion in equal measure,” said Professor Green.
“By offering student nurses meaningful placements in care homes, supported living, and home care, we open their eyes to the reality of integrated, person-centred care delivered at the heart of communities.
“These experiences will not only enrich their training but inspire many to see adult social care as the rewarding and impactful career it truly is,” he said.
“This is how we build a confident, connected, and compassionate workforce for the future; and we welcome this bold commitment to making that future a reality,” he added.
