Notwithstanding its recent efforts to make adult social care a more attractive career, the Department has still not produced a convincing plan to address the chronic staff shortages in the long-term. Workforce vacancies in adult social remain worryingly high with some places, such as rural areas, particularly affected. In 2022–23, workforce vacancies exceeded 152,000 (9.9% vacancy rate) despite overseas recruitment of 70,000 staff. Proposed visa restrictions and risks of exploitation raise significant questions about the Department’s reliance on overseas staff in future. Given these significant challenges and numerous, repeated calls for a workforce strategy, we find the white paper’s coverage of the workforce woefully insufficient to the scale of the task. It does not tackle all the significant factors impacting recruitment and retention. For example, there is scant detail on pay. Neither does the white paper provide detail on workforce plans beyond 2025 despite the Department’s forecasts that the number of adult social care jobs will grow by almost one-third by 2035. Once again, we see one approach for the NHS and another for adult social care. While we welcome the Department’s plans to professionalise the workforce, it falls short on providing leadership on pay and ensuring parity of esteem with equivalent NHS roles. Reforming adult social care in England 7 Recommendation 4: In the absence of an NHS style workforce plan, alongside its Treasury Minute response, the Department should write to the Committee setting out how it will lead the sector to identify and address workforce challenges, including: • achieving a sustained reduction in the number of vacancies in the sector (beyond 2025) • addressing the challenges and risks associated with international recruitment • tackling local variations in vacancy rates • addressing issues around disparity with NHS pay • assessing which workforce initiatives are most effective for recruiting and retaining staff.