Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will (a) make an assessment of the capacity of the social care workforce for people with learning difficulties and (b) set out a workforce plan to tackle any deficits.

We have no plans to make a formal assessment. However, we continue to monitor workforce capacity in the adult social care sector, bringing together intelligence from the Department’s Capacity Tracker and Skills for Care data. This includes annual data on the proportion of the workforce trained to work with people with learning disabilities. ‘People at the Heart of Care: adult social care reform white paper’, published in December 2021, commits to invest at least £500 million to develop and support the workforce over the next three years and increase the sector’s ability to recruit and retain staff.