This month’s insight report looks at data on staff vacancies in care homes, and the quality of ethnicity data recording for mental health services.
Staff vacancies in care homes
One of the key messages from our State of Care report for 2020/21 was that staffing pressures were most acutely felt by people using and working in adult social care, including care homes and home-care services.
This report updates our data on care home staff vacancies. It shows that vacancies have continued to increase across England, while also giving a breakdown of vacancies by region.
Ethnicity data recording in mental health
Our report considers the quality of ethnicity data recording for mental health services within local health and care systems.
Both our State of Care report and our provider collaboration review (PCR) on children and young people’s mental health have highlighted concerns around inequalities, particularly for Black and minority ethnic groups during the pandemic.
Our PCR showed that the absence of good quality data on inequalities could lead to missed opportunities to adapt care to meet the needs of individuals and local populations. It can also reduce mental health services’ ability to understand variation in referrals, treatments and deaths by ethnicity.
We highlight the importance of all services collating reliable, quality evidence, which can identify and tackle inequalities, whilst improving the local system’s response to service equality.