Meeting Multiple Policy Imperatives: Encouraging and Discouraging People with Criminal Records to Work as Care Workers in Social Care: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Social care policy-making seeks to address longstanding staff recruitment and retention problems but also to protect vulnerable clients from harm. Internationally many states have policies requiring disclosure of conviction histories by applicants seeking work with vulnerable populations. Policies also seek to encourage rehabilitation of people with offending histories, particularly in countries with high employment. This article presents and discusses the policy implications of a scoping review conducted in 2019 to explore evidence of current practice in employing people with criminal records as care workers in social care and the potential to recruit new staff from this group. The literature contains limited evidence about the effectiveness of policies inhibiting or facilitating social care work by people with criminal records. Further research should clarify policy contradictions, identify barriers and facilitators in different parts of the care sector to employment and protection, while holistic evaluation of initiatives in this area is needed.

Skill mix: The potential for personal assistants to undertake health‐related tasks for people with personal health budgets

“…Unlike care workers in registered care settings, PAs are not required to undergo vetting and barring checks (although the local authority may pay for this if requested) (Skills for Care, Undated), they are unsupervised by senior staff or managers, and their identity is not necessarily known to the funder (the local authority), which has agreed the direct payment (Norrie, Bramley & Manthorpe, ). Neither does the local authority, or anyone, necessarily know of care workers employed privately by self‐funders (ibid).…”

Barriers and facilitators to ex-service personnel obtaining employment within social care roles with older people: a scoping review

“…In addition to national campaigns, there is scope to explore the potential for accessing untapped sources of potential employees in social care. For example, men are underrepresented within the frontline social care workforce – comprising only 18% of the workforce (Andalo, 2019) and there also may be opportunities for former prisoners or ex-offenders (Bramley et al , 2019; Norrie et al , 2020) and people leaving the armed forces to enter the health and social care workforce (Manthorpe and Bramley, 2019). Furthermore, it may be that underrepresented groups within the health and social care workforce may enrol for new initiatives being created in the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic.…”