About Sheffield CARES – Sheffield’s Care Academy

Our mission is to retain, recruit, and develop a strong social care workforce that delivers outstanding care for the people of Sheffield.

Be the missing piece

Sheffield CARES is a collaboration between health and care organisations. 

  • we offer job advice, work experience and apprenticeships in care
  • we offer learning and development opportunities including management, specialised skills, and leadership training
  • we promote best practices and innovation within care
  • we support staff to stay working within care
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Care worker holder a cup of tea and a sandwich

Our strategic priorities

Our Governance Board in May 2024 agreed that our key priorities for Sheffield CARES are:

  • recruitment
  • retention
  • career development

We’re currently working on plans for Sheffield CARES and will update these priorities soon!

Our team

Sheffield CARES has been set up by the Sheffield City Council’s Workforce Development Team (within the Adults Care and Wellbeing Directorate), in partnership with health and social care organisations across Sheffield and South Yorkshire.

Our role is to deliver on the Care Sector Workforce Development Strategy. The strategy aims to address the longstanding issues affecting the adults care workforce by:

  • valuing, empowering, and retaining the adult care workforce 
  • creating a more representative adult care workforce 
  • developing the adult care workforce 
  • attracting and recruiting the adult care workforce 
  • improving conditions for the adult care workforce
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Group shot of the Sheffield CARES team

Adults care and wellbeing

For information about all things related to Adults Social Care, including accessing support, and information for professionals and providers, you can visit Adults Social Care | Sheffield City Council.

The Adult Health and Social Care Strategy and action plan 2022 to 2030 describes some of the vision and actions to ensure that people are ‘Living the Life you want to Live’.

Governance Board

The Governance Board is responsible for overseeing the progress of the Care Academy and providing strategic direction. It's chaired by Dawn Bassinder, Chief Social Worker at Sheffield City Council, and meets every two months. 

The Governance Board is made up of Sheffield City Council, representatives from Sheffield Care Association and other care providers, personal assistants, Sheffield College, Sheffield Carers Centre, and Primary Care Doncaster Limited.

Working groups

We ran a series of workshops in June and July 2024 to co-design what the Sheffield Care Academy should look like, based on 6 key areas:

  • attracting people into social care
  • recruitment
  • training and development
  • retention
  • innovation
  • data, evaluation and monitoring

We'll continue to seek input and advice from the social care sector in Sheffield as projects evolve.

Our partners

Organisations that helped us to develop Sheffield CARES 

Organisations we work with

Contact us

If you would like further information about Sheffield CARES, please contact us at sheffieldcares@sheffield.gov.uk and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.