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NHS Digital¹ yesterday published its latest annual report on components of the social care workforce in England.

Personal Social Services: Staff of Social Services Departments, England 2018² includes information on the people employed by local authority adult social services as at September 2018.

This report covers the 112,200 workers employed by local authorities in adult social care services in 2017, accounting for approximately 6.8% of the total adult social care workforce in England.

Information in the report includes:

• the number of local authority adult social care jobs by job role and employer type
• starters, leavers and vacancy rates
• the proportion of jobs with zero hours contracts, by job role group
• the average number of hours per week which are worked by adult social care staff within local authorities
• individual worker characteristics such as gender, age, ethnicity, pay and qualifications
• average number of sick days taken by adult social care staff in local authorities

The report does not include information on staff employed in the independent sector (private and voluntary) or children's social services departments (published separately by the Department for Education).

Read the full report

Personal Social Services: Staff of Social Services Departments, England 2018

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Notes to editors

1. NHS Digital is the national information and technology provider for the health and care system.  Our team of information analysis, technology and project management experts create, deliver and manage the crucial digital systems, services, products and standards upon which health and care professionals and citizens depend. During the 2017/18 financial year, NHS Digital published 275 statistical reports. Our vision is to harness the power of information and technology to make health and care better. The Health and Social Care Information Centre is a non-departmental body created by statute, also known as NHS Digital. We provide ‘Information and Technology for better health and care’. Find out more about our role and remit at www.digital.nhs.uk
2. This report has used data collected by the National Minimum Data Set for Social Care (NMDS-SC) for the past seven years (from 2011). The NMDS-SC is managed by Skills for Care (SfC) on behalf of the Department of Health and has been collecting information about social care providers and their staff since early 2006.
3. Following an open National Statistics consultation, it was decided that the NMDS-SC would replace the Personal Social Services Staff of Social Services Departments’ return SSDS001 from September 2011 as the adult workforce data return for local authorities. The data in this report is therefore not directly comparable with SSDS001 and so comparisons are not made to data prior to 2011 in this report. For more information regarding this, see the Data Quality report that accompanies this publication.
4. For media enquires please contact media@nhsdigital.nhs.net or telephone 0300 30 33 888.