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How we鈥檙e recruiting younger people into social care

In this article, we hear from Laura Turner, Recruitment Coordinator, and Jackie Doe, Senior Operations Manager, from Surrey Choices, on their approach to recruiting younger people into social care.

It’s no secret that younger people are underrepresented in social care. In fact, 29% of our workforce is aged over 55, which means that they could retire in the next 10 years. Our sector requires a big push for the recruitment of younger demographics if we’re going to be able to meet the demand for care in the future. The Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care, which launched in July 2024, highlighted this as a priority issue for the social care, recommending a 10-year attraction plan for men, younger people and people with technical skills.

Some providers are already making progress in helping our sector meet its goals when it comes to attracting younger people. Surrey Choices is an adult social care provider who supports disabled, autistic and neurodivergent people to enable them to live active lives in their communities in ways that they choose. Their range of services includes employment support, respite support, independent travel training and day support.

Over the last few years, Surrey Choices has been running a successful recruitment programme targeted at introducing more young people to social care through placements and work experience. We speak to Laura and Jackie about how this programme came to be and why it’s so important to them.

Laura Turner – Recruitment Coordinator

I first came to work in social care in 2022 having spent most of my career in recruitment in other sectors. I was already aware of some of the challenges that the sector faces when it comes to the aging workforce, so it wasn’t necessarily a surprise to discover that attracting people from a younger demographic was a priority for Surrey Choices.

When I first joined the organisation, placements for people in education were already being offered, but there was very little structure to the programme. For me, it was critical to formalise things with policy and structure first and foremost. This meant taking the responsibility of arranging placement opportunities away from various staff and managers and centralising it under my role.

Making this project a focus for myself and designated colleagues allowed us to put together a really compelling proposition for students and for managers within Surrey Choices. First, we looked at how to make the placement experience rewarding, and this is where we decided it was important to ensure students left their placement with a physical certificate of completion for their care training. This meant every person who finished a placement with us got something to take away and possibly build on if they came back to us. Second, we took away as much paperwork as possible from Surrey Choices managers, streamlining the process and removing hassle that could act as a roadblock.

When it comes to actually engaging with young people and attracting them, we’ve had most of our success through careers fairs and speaking at schools. It’s great to actually get out in front of people where you can get a feel for their values. As a values-based recruiter, we’re firmly of the belief that if a person has the right attitudes and beliefs, you can train them to be successful in almost any task within care. We used some really simple techniques to attract students at career events, one being inviting students to spin a wheel before they could take a freebie off our stall. The wheel had lots of different questions on about social care, and this helped us get them into conversations. Many of those students ended up doing placements with us.

Flexibility has been critical to making the placement opportunities appealing too. We make sure we’re as flexible with our younger placement staff as we are with our regular staff. Some of them work just one day per week for several months, while others work full-time just two weeks. This gives them the freedom to decide how they want to work with us.

In terms of feedback, it’s clear that younger people have introduced some really interesting new ways of working for our organisation. They tend to be really on top of things when it comes to digital, so they’re almost always instantly capable of using technology to solve problems. They also tend to be happy to question our established ways of working and help us come up with new approaches that can be easier or save time.

Jackie Doe – Senior Operations Manager

Before coming to work for Surrey Choices I had worked for over a decade in independent schools and special schools supporting those with autism. So, recruiting younger people into our sector has long been close to my heart, as I’ve seen the great contribution and levels of care that they’re capable of first hand.

For my part, I was able to capitalise on some existing relationships within schools to help move things along. Having worked in education before and being a governor at a local school I was able to get in touch with the right networks, which enabled me to secure some invites to various schools to participate in careers events and talk to students about the opportunities available in our sector.

When you stand in front of a group of teenage students, I’m typically very aware that most of them aren’t necessarily that interested in social care. However, I think for the few who are interested, perhaps because they have some experience of care, either themselves or through friends or family, us being there to promote our work can be a real catalyst for their career.

One of the most important things to do when talking to young people is to try to dispel many of the myths or negative narratives around the sector. They often have this preconceived notion that care is all about looking after old people and is poorly paid. We try to make them realise that care has lots of options available, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll even be caring for someone directly if you work in this sector. Plus, care can be one of the most rewarding jobs on the planet with plenty of career development opportunities when you’re working for the right employer.

That being said, being successful in introducing young people to social care doesn’t just depend on recruitment techniques. One of the most impactful changes we made for our organisation was making a concerted effort to shift the view of managers who would be working with the young people. We had to spend time preparing managers to work with people who are younger than they’re used to, ensuring they recognise the value of their presence, and the fact that without this generation in care, the entire sector would suffer in the long run. In practice, this sometimes meant making the managers workload slightly lighter to ensure they had time to support someone with less experience.

In terms of the feedback from those we support, we’ve found working with younger people has been great. Naturally many of our younger supported people would rather spend time with people their own age as they’re able to bond and share common experiences. Let’s face it – as a young person you would likely rather go bowling with someone you own age, rather than someone your parent’s age. This makes the care experience far more enjoyable.

Make sure to visit our ‘Recruiting the right people’ campaign landing page for more information on recruitment.

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