Workforce data collection 2023

We carry out the workforce data collection every year to give a snapshot of the social care workforce in Wales.

We ask local authorities and independent service providers to send us data on their workforce numbers and characteristics.

We’ve run the collection since 2021, after Welsh Government’s Performance and improvement framework for social services in Wales replaced previous collections with a single process managed by us.

The collection is different to information published about the registered workforce as it collects data on everyone working in social care.

It also looks at things like contracts and working hours, as well as joiners and leavers and where they move to and from.

We collect the data to get a better understanding of those who work in social care in Wales.

This improves our ability to make informed and evidence-based decisions about the workforce, so they can be empowered to better support people who use care and support.

We were given the responsibility of collecting this data as we regulate the social care workforce in Wales.

Before 2021, the data was collected a number times by different organisations. This meant that work was often repeated unnecessarily.

Find out what data we collect.

We analyse the data and present it in a report we publish every year, which gives an overview of the workforce as a whole and breaks the findings down for different settings.

You can see the 2022 report here.

We’ll also use the data to produce related articles and content about different aspects of our findings through the National Social Care Data Portal.

We’ve made some changes to the process for this year’s collection.

• We won’t be collecting data on foster carers, as a lot of the same data is already collected by the National Fostering Framework. Foster carers are also not technically employees, so questions about employment may not be relevant to them.
• Zero hours and casual contracts are now treated as two separate contract types.
• Registered nurses’ roles are now split into two experience levels - ‘newly qualified (first year in practice)’ and ‘registered nurses (one year or more)’.
• We’ve introduced two levels of data collector – ‘organisation level’ and ‘work address level’. This means organisations’ data collectors (organisation level) will have a better overview of the data being submitted by the individual settings (work address level) who feed into their collection.
• New summaries and dashboards in SCWonline will give providers access to the data they’ve sent us since 2022.

We need your organisation to send us data through SCWonline.

If you’re a data collector for your organisation, you should see ‘Workforce Data Collection’ appear in the top menu when you log into your SCWonline account.

Once you’ve clicked through to the workforce data collection area of the site, you’ll find guidance on how to complete your return.

If you’re unsure who the data collector for your organisation is, please contact data@socialcare.wales.