Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of her policies on social care on (a) staff recruitment and retention and (b) service user outcomes.

Preliminary findings for the Department's workforce reform programme have indicated that workers with multiple positive employment factors, including increasing access to training and qualifications, were more likely to stay in employment. Planned evaluation of the reforms will aim to measure the impact on intention to leave, and actual turnover, along with other outcomes.

We anticipate benefits from the workforce reform programme will include a reduction in staff turnover, improved quality of care from a better trained and more stable workforce, increased workforce productivity, and an increase in efficiency savings for social care providers as they reduce the amount of retraining and recruitment needed. These all contribute to our wider goals of improvements in the quality-of-care provision and improved access to care.