Barnardo's Cymru welcomes the publication of the Social Care Workforce Delivery Plan 2024 – 27 including the ambition to improve health and wellbeing support and decrease the numbers leaving the sector.
Barnardo’s Cymru currently runs more than 60 diverse services across Wales, in partnership with local authorities. Each year, we regularly support more than 10,000 children, young people and families. We provide a wide range of services from early intervention and family support, to working with children, young people, and their families affected by abuse and exploitation.
Through this work we understand the importance of ensuring that the workforce is supported to deliver these essential services to children, young people and their families.
We welcome the significant focus within the delivery plan to ensure that the mental health and wellbeing of practitioners is supported, particularly through improvements to wellbeing resources, refreshing the health and well-being framework and the development of a more in-depth national survey assessing happiness and anxiety by 2030.
The 2024-27 workforce delivery plan sets out a new direction for the social care workforce, focusing on wellbeing, training and retention, which will make for a more resilient and confident workforce and ensure staff are able to be supported with their own wellbeing, whilst doing so much for others.
Sarah Crawley
Director, Barnardo’s Cymru & Southwest
We look forward to further work to explore extending the mental health support service to volunteers and unpaid carers and we believe this would make a significant difference to all those in a caring role.
We would welcome further detail on how the issues around workloads will be addressed.
We’re pleased to see that engagement with the workforce has been a priority when developing this delivery plan and we hope that this will continue as the actions are implemented.