Given the significant workforce challenges facing the sector, we asked the Department why it had not produced a workforce strategy, despite repeated calls from the sector and our previous recommendations.46 It told us that it considered the workforce chapter of its 38 Committee of Public Accounts, The adult social care workforce in England, Thirty-Eighth Report of Session 2017–19, HC 690, 9 May 2018; Comptroller and Auditor General, The adult social care workforce in England, Session 2017–19,...

Given the significant workforce challenges facing the sector, we asked the Department why it had not produced a workforce strategy, despite repeated calls from the sector and our previous recommendations.46 It told us that it considered the workforce chapter of its 38 Committee of Public Accounts, The adult social care workforce in England, Thirty-Eighth Report of Session 2017–19, HC 690, 9 May 2018; Comptroller and Auditor General, The adult social care workforce in England, Session 2017–19, HC 714, National Audit Office, 8 February 2018 39 Q 34; C&AG’s Report, para 1.8, Figure 2 40 Qq 16, 33, 34; C&AG’s Report, para 1.8 41 Q 17 42 Departmen Type: conclusion | Number: 20 | Response status: accepted Government response: 4.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 4.2 In 2021, the department published its workforce strategy in Chapter 5 of People at the Heart of Care: adult social care reform and in 2023 published the subsequent plan Next