Increased demand for adult social care legal professionals

03/12/2009

Demand for adult social[nbsp]care lawyers has increased by 30% over the past six months, according to Sellick Partnership Legal. Following on from recently published research by the Care Quality Commission calling for Local Authorities to improve standards in care homes across the UK, it is expected that this trend is set to continue.

According to the research, despite a 95% increase of local authorities performing ‘excellent’ or ‘well’ in their commissioning of adult social care, too many adults are being failed by the system. Approximately 400 care homes have rated ‘poor’ and a fifth fail to meet the standards on social contact and activity.

Following on from this, a total of 16 councils, who have not been named to avoid giving them advance warning, will be selected for in-depth service inspections on the basis of concerns about performance, and gaps in evidence on the length of time since their last service inspection.

In light of these new findings and proposed inspections, it is expected that Local Authorities will require experienced adult social care locums to deal with increased workloads.

James Monaghan, Senior Consultant comments: “As the number of adult social care cases increases and there is heightened pressure on local authorities to meet these service levels standards – we are experiencing high continuous demand for specialists in this field.

“The quick changes that are taking place and the reactive nature of these research findings, means that local authorities are recruiting locums to meet skill gaps in adult social care – we anticipate that this trend will continue going forward into 2010.”

If you are an experienced adult social care legal professional, and currently seeking new career opportunities, please contact one of our specialist consultants today on 0161 834 1642.