Nobody knows what anticipation is anymore. Everything is so immediate.
I'm not sure 80s rocker Joan Jett was talking about social care but she could have been as our sector is one where the only constant is change.
Anticipating what the organisation I lead, Skills for Care, will achieve in 2014 is always going to be at least partly driven by events. It's not because we don't have a plan – of course we do – but because we are sensitive to the immediacy of change. So we stand ready to respond to those things we don't yet know we will have to make happen, as well as ensuring we do everything we set out to do at the start of the year.
Our plan, developed with expert guidance from our employer-led board, is focused on creating a workforce that is confident, skilled and qualified. A workforce of around 1.5 million valued by the communities it serves because it gives value back.
Ensuring everyone in our sector has the right values - dignity, respect, kindness and compassion - that are at the heart of person centred care and support. The trick is applying those same principles to the way we recruit, retain and develop the people making up that workforce.
Supporting employers to prepare for the changes that the care bill will bring is a major challenge to us all and is central to our plan.
Together with colleagues in the National Skills Academy for Social Care and the College of Social Work, we have developed a national learning and development plan. It is focused around the "customer journey" and, as with all our work, the programme is being developed with employers and other partners. Supporting employers to plan for and achieve the workforce they need to provide high quality services is also critical so we are developing workforce capacity and workforce planning resources.
Better still, we have exciting ideas about how we can better support employers to equip their employees to demonstrate what they know and can do, as well as what they have learned.
Collaboration is key and we are working with Health Education England and Skills for Health in developing the care certificate recommended by Camilla Cavendish. Rightly, the light has been shone on those elements in our sector where brutality and neglect have prevailed instead of care and support.
Eager as we are to eradicate abuse quickly and irrevocably, we must not allow appalling incidents to skew perceptions. The reality is that the vast majority of what happens in social care every day is something we should be proud of. Organisations led by people dedicated to the highest standards, focused on supporting their staff to achieve these standards and develop professionally.
Workforce issues are pivotal to achieving integrated services. We will continue to support the integration pioneers and consider the feedback on the Principles of Workforce Integration, a great example of a partnership production with Think Local Act Personal, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, NHS Employers, Skills for Health and the Local Government Association.
Culture is crucial in organisations which is why we are developing a toolkit to support positive workplace cultures. I'm also very encouraged that more than 1,200 organisations have registered for the Social Care Commitment and over 400 have completed the full sign up since its September launch. Produced with and by employers, the commitment is a public statement of an organisation's promise to invest in its staff, supporting them to provide the highest quality care and support. We want all employers to sign up so we will be working hard to encourage and support achieving this.
Individual employers and personal assistants will continue to be fully included in all aspects of workforce development, as we deliver our ambitious plan for further implementation of the PA framework.
There is much our sector needs to harness from different forms of technology so we are, again in partnership, developing a digital literacy framework that can be used on the frontline.
And then of course there's the productive work we are doing driving up the number of apprenticeships in our sector, expanding the I Care…Ambassador network, supporting social work reform, disbursing the highly valued Workforce Development Fund, and providing vital strategic knowledge through our National Minimum Data Set for Social Care (NMDS-SC).
Plenty to keep us busy then and I'm excited about what we will achieve together. There's only any point in all of this activity if it's really going to make a difference to the lives of people who need care and support to live independently in the communities across England where they live. That's why we're doing it and we look forward to working with you on our journey through 2014.
Sharon Allen is chief executive of Skills for Care
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