This week Skills for Care is delighted to officially launch our Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS).
ASC-WDS isn’t entirely new and it may be something you’re already familiar with from our previous guest blog with National Care Forum, where we discussed how using ASC-WDS can support social care employers to retain staff.
Indeed, ASC-WDS first went live as a minimum viable product in 2019. This means that we first introduced the service with just its core functionality, and since then our specialist team have been continuing to add to the service, ready now for its official launch.
We already have 20,000 providers using the service which brings practical benefits to them and feeds in valuable sector insight and data to key policy makers. We’re excited to see more providers sign up and make the most of the service following our official launch.
Skills for Care has been collecting data from the adult social care workforce since 2005 when the National Minimum Data Set for Social Care (NMDS-SC) was established. NMDS-SC evolved from a paper collection to an online service and was eventually replaced by ASC-WDS.
One of the most important objectives of our ASC-WDS service is the role it plays in developing a clear picture of our sector and workforce, and aiding decision making based on this intelligence. Every social care employer who uses ASC-WDS is playing a key role in informing key decisions and discussions.
The data collected in ASC-WDS underpins the development of Skills for Care’s annual ‘State of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ and ‘Size and structure of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ reports.
ASC-WDS is a free-to-use, online data collection service which helps social care employers to safely and securely manage staff records. It also provides access to funding for training and gives managers a tool to keep track of their staff’s training requirements.
The service also allows social care managers to benchmark their service against other similar providers on workforce metrics, including pay, sickness, turnover, and qualifications.
ASC-WDS users also gain access to training programmes, and an up-to-date ASC-WDS account means adult social care providers are eligible to claim from the Workforce Development Fund (WDF).
As we officially launch ASC-WDS we’re also delighted to introduce our new Benefits Bundle, which is our way to say thank you to all our ASC-WDS users for the vital insight that they provide to support our sector.
The new Benefits Bundle will provide all new and existing ASC-WDS account holders with special offers and discounts across Skills for Care’s products and services, including 10% off all items in our bookshop and our eLearning modules. Some of Skills for Care’s endorsed training providers will also be working with us to offer discounts across their valuable training programmes.
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