Case Study – Developing a workforce strategy for Halton’s Adult Social Care Workforce
The need
Halton Borough Council faced a growing challenge in its adult social care system. The borough’s population is ageing rapidly, with residents aged 65 and over expected to increase by 40% over the next decade. At the same time, the workforce that delivers vital care is shrinking and ageing, a third of staff are over 55, and fewer than one in ten are under 30.
The sector was experiencing increasing demand, more complex care needs, and difficulty attracting younger staff. Pay disparities, limited progression routes, working conditions and lower job security compared to neighbouring areas were compounding pressures across the system. Yet Halton also had strengths to build on: a committed workforce, lower-than-average turnover, and strong community networks.
The council recognised the need for a long-term, evidence-based strategy to ensure the adult social care system could continue to deliver high-quality, person-centred care.
The solution
We worked with Halton Borough Council to design a comprehensive adult social care workforce strategy that sets out a clear plan to build a resilient, skilled, and valued workforce.
Our work combined analytical depth with extensive system-wide collaboration. Our evidence base brought together workforce data, Skills for Care benchmarking, and socio-economic analysis, giving Halton its first integrated picture of current and future workforce supply.
Drawing on this insight, we developed a shared vision for Halton’s care workforce: one where care is seen not just as a job, but as a meaningful and rewarding career. We co-designed the strategy with providers, the Integrated Care Board, and workforce representatives through targeted interviews, workshops, and a borough-wide consultation, ensuring that the strategy reflected local priorities, experience, and ambition.
The strategy focuses on strengthening recruitment, supporting retention, and promoting workforce wellbeing, while embedding fair pay, progression, and professional development at the heart of the local care system. To ensure lasting impact, we translated the strategy into a sequenced, three-year implementation plan with clear ownership, milestones, and measurable outcomes, ensuring delivery is practical, accountable, and genuinely embedded across the system.
The impact
The resulting workforce strategy provides a robust and practical roadmap for action – one that will directly support over 1,000 adult social care staff, while also shaping the future workforce and those providing informal care, through clearer career pathways, stronger workforce standards, and a renewed culture of recognition and support.
Early delivery steps are already underway, including the establishment of a strategy steering group to oversee implementation and early scoping for a workforce development hub to coordinate recruitment, training, and career development across the sector. These actions mark the first stage in translating the strategy into practice and building collective ownership of its delivery.
As implementation gathers pace, the strategy is already bringing partners together around a shared vision for the future of adult social care in Halton. This alignment of investment, leadership, and partnership will build a more stable, confident, and capable workforce, able to meet the needs of Halton’s population of nearly 130,000 residents with compassion and consistency.
Looking ahead, the strategy will drive measurable improvements in workforce stability, recruitment, and capability, reducing turnover, widening entry routes into adult social care, and building confidence across the system. By embedding workforce investment into commissioning and partnership processes, Halton is creating a stronger, more sustainable social care sector that offers both excellent care for residents and meaningful, rewarding careers for its staff.
“Skills for Health were the outstanding applicant to our soft market test to support the development of an Adult Social Care Workforce Strategy and implementation plan.
Skills for Health’s expertise, knowledge and approach demonstrated credibility with the sector, enabling over 20 organisations to participate in the strategy development. Critical to this was their flexible and engaging approach.
The resulting strategy and plan have been greatly received across the borough, outlining a clear three-year approach to strengthening all aspects of the social care workforce through credible insights and solution focused actions to maintain and improve the workforce over the coming years.”
– Damian Nolan, Director: Commissioning and Provision, Adult Social Care Halton.