Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department are taking to help (a) specialist disability providers and (b) other social care services in Birmingham Erdington constituency (i) recruit and (ii) retain care workers.

The Adult Social Care Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund is providing £562 million over this financial year, of which £13.1 million is going to the City of Birmingham. Local authorities can choose to use their allocation to address local workforce capacity pressures in adult social care through retention activity.

On 4 April 2023, we published our plans for investing £250 million on workforce reforms to improve career progression and access to learning and development opportunities to help reduce turnover. We will continue to engage with care commissioners and employers to consider how best to support workforce retention and recruitment.