More work needed to make social care nursing ‘attractive’, says MP

Nurses must be given improved working conditions and opportunities for career progression to help increase the adult social care nursing workforce, an MP has told Nursing in Practice.

Sojan Joseph is a former NHS mental health nurse and chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on adult social care.

He said the financial pressures on local government and the struggle to increase the workforce were two of the biggest challenges facing social care at the moment.

‘But this is a stressful job, and social care nurses need to have some sense of career progression and they need to feel valued and be paid well, otherwise the job will not be attractive,’ Mr Joseph, who is the Labour MP for Ashford, warned.

He added that he is hopeful the government’s upcoming NHS workforce plan will include an ‘announcement’ which helps to ease concerns about social care workforce planning going forward.

The plan is expected to include greater focus on school nursing and health visiting.

The value of lived experience

Mr Joseph worked as an NHS mental health nurse before becoming an MP in 2023 and says the experience of frontline social care nurses should be used to shape government policy going forward.

‘It’s important to share the voice of adult social care nurses, who have lived experience in the role, that they can contribute to policy,’ he said.

‘I will be using my background in nursing as an NHS mental health nurse to bring attention to the role of nurses in adult social care and to help influence the government in this area,’ he said.

‘Without fixing social care, we cannot fix the NHS’

‘Adult social care has definitely been overlooked and has not been given the attention that it needs,’ Mr Joseph said.

‘Without fixing social care, we cannot fix the NHS,’ he warned.

Earlier this month, social care representatives told the Health and Social Care Committee that plans for a ‘fair pay agreement’ in the adult social care sector will help boost the workforce and economy.

In January, the government announced plans to launch an independent commission to ‘rebuild’ adult social care, but said it was unlikely that long-term social care reform will be achieved before 2028.

Last November, Nursing in Practice exclusively published a discussion paper calling for ‘parity of esteem’ across social care nursing.

Also in November, it was announced that the Labour government has committed to developing a new long-term workforce plan for the NHS that will be published in the summer this year.