“Any investment in the social care workforce is welcome and in the context of a tight labour market, it’s critical those working in social care have opportunities to develop and expand their skills.

“However, this alone is not enough to tackle the scale of the challenge facing the social care sector which is losing staff to the retail and hospitality sectors among others every day. There are 165,000 vacancies across social care and social care providers simply don’t have the pay or benefits to recruit enough potential social care workers.

“80% of NHS leaders recently told us that a lack of adequate social care capacity is driving urgent care demand and 73% said it’s undermining efforts to tackle the elective backlog. The NHS and social care, and those needing care across the country, can’t afford to wait any longer for government to tackle the social care workforce crisis head-on as we move towards what will be an incredibly challenging winter.

“Our members are calling on the government to introduce and fund a national minimum care worker wage of at least £10.50 an hour to stem the flow of workers leaving the sector and to attract more people into the social care workforce.”