Category Archives: Social care

Evaluating the Adult Social Work Apprenticeship Fund: Benefits, Challenges and Lessons

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With adult social care facing ongoing workforce pressures, could additional social work apprenticeships be part of the answer? Nicole Steils, Mary Baginsky, Ian Kessler and Kalpa Kharicha present findings from the evaluation of the Department of Health and Social Care’s Adult Social Work Apprenticeship Fund 2024-2025. Full report (published 7 September 2026) available here | Project page at King’s. (710 words)

Social Work Apprenticeships in Adult Social Care

Adult social care services in England are facing major workforce challenges. There are ongoing difficulties in recruiting and keeping qualified social workers, while demand for services and the complexity of people’s needs continue to expand. Within this context, social work degree apprenticeships have become an increasingly important part of workforce planning. They provide an employment-based route to becoming a qualified social worker, while also aiming to support a sustainable workforce and widen access to the profession.

Social Work Apprenticeship Fund

In January 2024, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) introduced the Adult Social Work Apprenticeship Fund. The Fund aimed to help local authorities increase the number of social work apprenticeships and to expand support for apprentices by covering some costs that were not covered by the Apprenticeship Levy, now known as the Growth and Skills Levy.

The evaluation

Our evaluation looked at how the Fund was used, what helped or hindered the use, and what results it achieved. We examined data from 70 local authorities who received funding, and interviewed staff in 12 different local authorities. Continue reading →

At HSR 2025: On new roles in UK health and social care

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Antonina SemkinaDr Antonina Semkina is Research Associate at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce, King’s College London. Antonina brought together contributions for this blog from the other presenters at this Health Services Research conference session in Newcastle. (773 words)

One of the core functions of conferences is to allow colleagues to present and discuss work in progress. Here we share the results of a fruitful session where colleagues researching the introduction of new roles in health and social care saw many important parallels that will help them in developing and sharpening their analysis.

On the 2 and 3 July 2025 Newcastle University hosted the 18th annual Health Services Research conference. It featured nine thematic streams including Person Centred Care, Workforce, Digital, Social Care and Health Inequalities. Delegates had an opportunity to attend research discussions and Pecha Kucha sessions (short form presentations), workshops (e.g., ‘How do we know if HSR impacts on Policy?’ led by Unit Director Professor Annette Boaz), plenary sessions (e.g., ‘The 2030 workforce: how will innovative research deliver impact’?), meet ups (e.g., for Early career researchers) and to view research posters.

HSR UK 2025 conference poster

One of the research discussion sessions in the Workforce stream featured four presentations related to various new roles being developed in UK health and care services. Unit researcher Dr Antonina Semkina presented on the ‘New Roles in Health and Social Care: What is the nature of new care coordinator roles?’ project that she is conducting as part of the Health and Social Care Workforce Policy Research Unit programme of work. The research project, developed in collaboration with the Unit Public Contributors Involvement and Engagement group, focuses on what kinds of new care co-ordinator roles are being created, what tasks are delegated to them and the implications for various stakeholders (e.g., colleagues’ workload). Continue reading →