#ShareWhyYouCare: raising awareness

Recent headlines have highlighted a care sector under pressure, with 165,000 vacancies needing to be filled. In a bid to raise awareness of careers in care as well as celebrating the people already working within the sector, one care sector technology platform kicked off 2023 by calling on care staff to share the reasons they work in the industry.

Initiated by Care Hires, The #ShareWhyYouCare initiative called for the 1.5 million people who work in adult social care to share why they’ve chosen a career in care, and help others appreciate the huge positives and great sense of reward.

Speaking of the initiative, Suleman Sacranie, Co-Founder of Care Hires, said: “We wanted to start 2023 with something positive to celebrate the staff who are rising to meet these challenges daily while raising awareness of the sector as a career path to those who may not have previously considered it. There are some incredible people working in care doing incredible things and we wanted to share their stories.”

For more information, please visit www.carehires.com

The new system went live at the start of August 2022 and is already enabling frontline staff to access key items of patient information from GP, hospital, health and social care IT systems as a single record.

Further phases of the rollout will add additional data, so professionals working across Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly have a more complete view of a patient’s medical history.

This will improve the quality and safety of care, by reducing the amount of time that staff have to spend calling around for information and cutting the number of times that patients have to repeat their story.

Dr John McCormick, a GP, and the clinical lead for the Devon and Cornwall Care Record, said: “We are developing the record progressively, in a controlled way, so we can be confident about the quality of the data that it contains, and how to use it.”

Coming to the Royal College of GP’s, London, on 7th March, Hallmark Foundation and Working Options in Education are hosting a free national care conference for school pupils aged between 14-19 years of age to encourage the next generation of health professionals into the care sector.

The fun and informative event seeks to attract young talent into the profession by increasing awareness and will share the importance of working in care settings, supporting the industry’s need to fill the 2.27 million roles required to care for us all by 2035.

Anita Goyal MBE, trustee of the Hallmark Foundation, said: “Over 1.5 million people currently work in some of the most important and valuable jobs in our society. With our ageing population, there will be a growing demand for the next generation of the care workforce. Everyone can care!”

For more information, please visit www.workingoptions.org.uk

For more information, please visit www.devonandcornwall carerecord.nhs.uk