Building A Skilled Workforce For Our Care Sector

My guests are always first to acknowledge the invaluable support that OxLEP can provide and the positive difference it could make to your company or organisation. As you'd expect, our focus in these podcasts is on businesses in Oxfordshire, but naturally you may well be enjoying OxTalks wherever you are in the UK or further afield. With that in mind, please feel free to join in the conversation and share any thoughts and feedback. Our social media is the easiest way to get in touch.

We are at Oxfordshire LEP on X and Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership on LinkedIn. You can raise a question for future discussions or leave your thoughts on the topics of conversation. Please use the email address on the podcast description and we look forward to hearing from you. In this edition, we'll discuss building a skilled workforce for our care sector.

We'll also explore the key challenges currently facing this critical area of our economy and society and discovering what opportunities there are to grow a pipeline of talent to support that future growth. Most news headlines around the care sector don't make for happy reading. The chief executive of the King's Fund, the health sector focused independent think tank, said in July that the current social care system in England was not fit for purpose.

The UK as a whole has an ageing population with worsening health outcomes in direct comparison to so many of our neighbours in the developed world. A staggering 1. 5 million people work in social care in England, in 1. 2 million full time equivalent roles. That's on a par with numbers employed in the NHS. Even more bewildering is the fact, according to the ONS, there are 5. 7 million unpaid carers across the UK who are likely caring for a similar number of people who cannot manage on their own.

Alongside these numbers, Skills for Care's annual State of the Adult Social Care Sector and Workforce in England report have the number of unfilled roles in the care sector standing at 152, 000 in March this year. That means 1 in 10 social care roles remain vacant. Commentators say that an extra 440, 000 roles in care will likely be needed by 2035 to cope with the demand. Many questions persist, how will the care sector cope now and in the future? How can staff retention be improved?

Will wages have to rise in an industry not renowned for paying high salaries? And can immigration solve the sector's problems? Let's get the view from the sharp end of the industry. Walfinch is a thriving and very successful company providing bespoke, high quality care at home to individuals and families across the UK. They run a franchise model that has won national accolades, being named best for daycare expertise at the recent Home Care Awards.

I'm delighted to welcome brother and sister Amrit Dhaliwal, Chief Executive of Walfinch, and Kam Gill, Managing Director at Walfinch Oxfordshire. Great to talk to you both, and thanks for being our guests on OxTalks. Amrit, can we start with you? Tell us about Walfinch and what care services you provide for elderly and disabled people.

So, sometimes what you find with home care is that a family member, that might be the next responsible person, lives really far away and they just need someone to go and check in on mum and dad.

But then there might be others where you're going in three times a day and helping with medication, and personal care and so on all the way up to really complex care packages where you're living with somebody who it might be high risk to falls and so on so it's a really interesting and very varied industry.

So I thought, well okay, let's have a think about this. What could be the next thing? Now, well, I've seen the Goodfellas. I can, I can start a restaurant or a bar. Next thing you know, I've been able to get involved in this Italian deli in Richmond, and bought that, had no idea how to make a coffee, didn't drink wine and the only passes I'd had prior to that point were with curry from our mum and seems pretty easy.

I ran that for a bit with a few other businesses and actually it was really interesting. It was very hard to run a business, but I really enjoyed it and learning about and hiring the right people to do all of that. But I felt I had loads to give and my, wife, my then girlfriend is a dentist and running restaurants, I basically saw her on Sunday or Monday night and I'm having a chat with her Monday afternoon and I was saying, look, what do you think I could do?

I'm really keen to do something else and really, basically that it doesn't involve 90 hours a week and so on. She said, have you thought about domiciliary care? And I was probably about 25 at the time, and I thought, what the hell is that ? It was actually my real response that to her and next thing. You know, I'm speaking to all the franchisors around the country, this is back in 2012, and I've bought a franchise in home care.

I got my CQC registration, my Care Quality Commission registration, in November 2012. But by January or February 2013, I'd already realised that the market was broken.

Home care and franchising for home care in the UK, in my opinion, was totally archaic and it was only suitable for people that were from the sector and the world, this is it, this is where my 20 year mission is to change both those things, redefine home care, redefine franchising for the sector and so I built my business from zero, I think we took it to around a million pounds in revenue in a very different model to what was around we were focused on the private market so we could

pay staff well and not kind of reliant on local authority contracts and so on. Sold that business, I think, in 2018 and then we started Walfinch in 2019.

and basically have taken, I think, we'll, Get to, about 40 odd locations this year and some national span and just really trying to change the whole thing, turn it on its head, make it, more user friendly you know, simple things like being paperless and leveraging technology, being interested in social media, opening the industry up to people are not from the sector and thinking about, well, the gen Z's, how do you attract those guys?

so when I'm putting things out on social media, I'm thinking, are Kam's sons are interested in this, you know, are they interested in this? And if they're not interested in this, then I probably haven't pitched this right, as well. so it's really, it's been a very fun journey, I must say.

Obviously, there was an 11 year gap, I was so behind, everything had changed since I graduated because it's manual dexterity, you know, I was really out of touch so it's all a practical thing. I hadn't been in the loop and it's like new technology and I had no idea. So anyway, I started at the bottom.

I was there for about four years and not happy, didn't have a great boss and then one Christmas Eve, you know, we always, stay over at my mum and dad's Christmas Eve, the whole family together and Amrit just, you know, being Amrit said, do you fancy supporting this Punjabi lady?

We used to call her auntie and, take her to the temple on a, you know, twice a week and do a bit of cleaning for her, try it out, see how it goes for a bit So, Christmas Eve we're doing, you know, he's doing me an application form, I'm doing paperwork, you know, as you do and on Boxing Day, I've done my e learning and Boxing Day goes, Oh, do you want to try?

I started doing that twice a week, so I cut a day off at work and I was working six days a week, two days doing this and four days in the lab. and then Amrit mentioned, he goes, I'm looking for a recruiter. Do you want to come on board and do a bit of recruitment?

Just try it for six months and then you can move on and do whatever and here I am still, so I was doing recruitment, then I moved on doing a bit of coordinating and then Amrit suggested, oh, you're good at this, why don't you do your level five and then, uh, 2019 set up Walfinch and...

So, that is really helpful. You know, your training is updated, you know, we're having regular calls, regular newsletters, we have regular training, and the training is fun. Like, you know, the face to face training where everyone, we share ideas, share experiences, you know, live in care, you know, so, live in carers, it's sometimes a bit difficult because, you know, if the carer doesn't have work, they'll go and join another agency.

So with Walfinch, it's nice where we can, you know, say, right, I've got a live in carer free. Anybody, needs, a carer to cover this. So that way we keep our carers within our company.

With a business that turns over about a million odd pounds in revenue, you'd probably be looking at about thirty or so care workers with about one and a half times that in terms of clients, and that business would probably have a handful of people in the office as well depending on the type of work that you do. So, we focus predominantly on private work and that's only because it makes more sense.

It means that we can pay care workers really well, and we can focus on all that retention activity that you couldn't necessarily do if you didn't have the margins there. So businesses like that would need less management staff as well because they're less, generally speaking, less critical. So I'd say that Kam's business is probably slightly bigger than a lot of general locations, but she has very lean care workers.

In fact, I'd think, normally a business like this might have maybe 60 care workers, but actually you've got a lot of people that are on full time contracts and so on, which is also not particularly typical of the sector.

So that's one of the other things to sort of think about, but I think the average business within the sector will do anywhere between half a million to a million in revenue and will have anywhere between sort of a third to double the number of staff that Kam's probably got in her location.

So, Kam's come here with printed notes, I'm sure, so, uh, you know, so, whereas, uh, One of the things I have become very good at is finding the right people to fit the right roles and I think one of the reasons that we have grown well and at a sensible pace has been that we've been able to surround ourselves with the right people.

So when our franchise development, we've got someone that's super experienced, really understands that process and I just, I can give that to somebody and say, right, okay, you know, I come in right at the end of that journey, and then say, yay or nay, and we say no a lot actually to franchisees that come in because for me, I think when you're representing the brand that is really important and I often look at franchisees and think do I want you providing care

for my mum when the time comes and not, it wouldn't be them directly, but I think leadership says it all.

The other thing is that, we've done, been able to do the same with our operations team, who are, phenomenal and probably people that I was slightly surprised that came on board to work with us at this stage in the journey, where I would have thought, you know, you, I would expect people like this at this caliber, sort of six or seven years from now, and so, so that's been quite a sort of interesting piece, but for me, the biggest thing has been

the fundamental thought process really was always about increasing our span. So the people that you can impact and touch with that journey.

So when you have one location, you can make tremendous difference to somebody and initially, I thought, well, okay, I'll just build my own locations and build out my own businesses and frankly, that's probably more profitable, certainly in the first five to 10 years, but what I wouldn't have been able to do if we had done that was I wouldn't have been able to impact as many people and so, if you go nationally at that point, through franchising, you can

really make tremendous change within the sector, even though we're a small kind of nail in this massive thing, but we can make change, we can make a mark. It's much harder to do that as a single location provider.

So you've got a good team in place, if you like, centrally and then it's finding the right people to be franchisees and then obviously it's on the franchisee to find their right stuff locally.

For me, I've got a book coming out, hopefully, by the end of the year called The Homecare Revolution and really it's a small manual for people that are looking into the sector and thinking am I interested in this? And it talks about the problems and talks about possible solutions and it talks about, headlines on how to manage teams and run a business within the sector. But if we look ahead, we've got really a two tier system at the moment within the UK.

You've got the pay to play and if you have the finances to buy private care, you will get very good quality care throughout the UK, there are some excellent care providers. Walfinch is one of them. But I find it slightly saddening that if you don't have the finances and you're, waiting on local authority and the government, then invariably and actually Oxfordshire pays pretty well to home care providers comparatively.

So we have a really clear comparison and actually the Home Care Association do an annual report and they talk about the average pay that local authorities pay to providers in that area and invariably Oxfordshire is, tends to be on that, on the higher end of that.

Unless that changes across the country, we're going to have a problem with a lot of those people because a lot of those people are not going to be people that can pay to get care themselves and we'll make a huge dent in that market and really try to focus on that but, I cannot tell branch owners and franchisees to take on work when they cannot make profit out of that and I think people find profit a very dirty word within the social care sector. It isn't.

You can't retain staff or run a good quality care business without profit and here, I'm not talking about the Ferrari fund. I'm saying, can we take out care workers for a coffee if they're going through a divorce, and take the time out for that, or whatever it might be and it's really thinking about the human side of the thing.

Can we spend an extra hour with Mrs. Jones because actually she's, going through something and actually it's not something we're necessarily billing for, but we're able to do that because that's just something that we want to do. So you've got all of that part of it, but really I think a lot of this needs to come from government funding.

So it's all, we have various issues within the sector and as with many, but one of them is that great care workers are not paid to the degree that they should be paid. We're trying to change that within Walfinch, you know, we reward franchisees that pay well, and we really talk about that and we try to drive everyone to have a model that allows them to pay their care workers well, but you can't get that unless the funds are coming in from somewhere.

So it's important that we can give them that fifteen minute, have a coffee with them, have a chat because they want to, you know, have a moan and groan about something or they want some help calling the pharmacy because they're getting frustrated because they can't get through. So all these little jobs, people don't realise they all take time trying to get through a doctor surgery.

So I might have four of my staff in the office chasing different, various GPs because, although the carers has made the call, they're not going to answer the question there and then, they've got to wait for a call back. So, there's so many other things. So, we say a minimum one hour. That's attractive to the care staff that come on through our recruitment process because, oh wow, one hour and try and keep them working in areas. So, not having somebody drive 50 miles between clients.

So, you've got to look at things from the carer's point of view.

I think most people that have left a job recently in any industry will say they probably left their boss as opposed to going, across the road to do the same job for 10 percent more. You know, Yes, the money helps at that point, but invariably you leave leaders. We focus a lot on leadership and leadership training and that EQ part of it, because I think more and more people are interested in building relationships at work as opposed to just having it as a transactional thing.

We look at marketing for care workers all over, so it's not just in one space, right, we're going to put a job ad out on Indeed, it's really getting into the communities. You know, Kam's got, I think, six classes, or she will have by the end of next month, that are open to care workers if they want to come in, but focused to elderly people within the area and they are, you know, art classes and exercise classes and so on.

So they're really open, donation based, so basically free to come into and it's really kind of getting into the community, then it's a whole spectrum of other things. How do you build your local profile? And I think if you just want to put an advert out and hope for the best, It doesn't really work anymore. I think it's really difficult to operate businesses like that and sorry, just one other thing. This is actually for providers that might be listening.

It's a wonderful book by a gentleman called Neil Eastwood called Saving Social Care and it's basically the blueprint of how to recruit and how to retain care workers.

We make a big deal when somebody comes through those doors for an interview, we want to be different to anybody else, we'll check in with them, send a little voice recording and, really make it personalised and we want people to know that we are different too, and we're very creative, I think, in doing those sort of things.

and we tell them about all of the things that we do in the community, which I think is nice and we have care staff that go out and assist and they really enjoy that because, you know, the other companies that they work for might not be doing those sort of things. So, I think it's about telling them all the things that we're doing that are very different to a normal standard care job. You know, we want them to be able to make a difference.

So when we do an assessment, we're finding out a lot of information about a client. So, for example, if somebody is interested in playing golf, that was something they did, we want to continue that with them. So, we have clients and we take them to the driving range. It's fun for the carers, it's fun for the clients. Somebody really cherishes a garden, we speak to the OTs, right, okay, we want the bed facing the garden in the conservatory or where they can see the garden.

So, you know, we have this client and he was bossing his wife around, she goes, he's doing my head in, I'm not doing this right, not doing that right, you know, if the carers are coming out of a care call satisfied, they're going to want to come back to work tomorrow.

If they're really like, oh, you've got 30 minutes to give medication, personal care, do the meals and that day the client is not in great form, they're depressed, not getting a bed, they're not going to be satisfied, they're not going to want to come back to work. So it's important that, when we are devising a care package, we're honest about everything, because if the carers are happy, we've got happy clients.

We got together, the finance ready to go and all that as in they were able to and I just it didn't feel right to me and I didn't feel like they were doing it for the right reasons and yes, you know on one hand, it's phenomenal we're building our business It's someone paying a license fee and so on but actually if they don't have the right values and ethics it's I think that's not a long term relationship. So I think identifying that is very important.

So I speak to everyone that a franchisee will speak to along their journey before they meet me and get their thoughts and opinions on these people and say, well, okay, do they show up on time to your Zoom call? Were they, in bed when they were talking to you or whatever it is and so really trying to understand that and how did you feel about them? Now, they will be scored along that journey with us as well on various different areas. Same with the franchisee.

so I'm huge on a Prospective franchisee speaking to other current franchisees, because they need to know outside of us, we're always a wonderful shop front, but you need to know on the ground, what's it like? What does it feel like? What are the complexities? Where's the hardship and so on and then do you still want to do it?

So my job, a lot of it is about putting people off, actually, once, once they make an inquiry and the key thing for me is you've got the values and the ethics piece of does that fit the bill? Are they going to uphold the brand?

Because it's a different relationship, franchisee and franchise always a slightly different relationship to just saying I'm starting a care business on my own, it does need to then fit the mold, you know, you wouldn't go to McDonald's and say actually I think the chips from down the road are better I'm just gonna buy those frozen chips and fry them, they are McDonald's chips. So it's really kind of saying, would this person follow a model?

Are they a team player and really contribute to the rest of the network? Would I want them to provide care for my own family? And do they have the grit and resilience? that I think it takes. It's really hard. You know, I've had many sleepless nights running businesses over the last, whatever, years.

and a lot of those in the early days were when you were starting off, you just didn't have the capital, the cash flows running dry and whatever and every business owner will have had this at some point or another and it is painful and then at that point, a choice of, do I carry on, or do I just put a pin in this right now and what we want are people that will get up, dust off, go again and it's that resilience that is required to operate businesses.

We've got cross sector, I think most people would probably agree with that, that if you don't have that fundamentally, everything else, it will lack. I mean, so passion and resilience are super important to collide in order to be successful in this sector and any, in my opinion.

They, you know, have competency checks. They've got to go out in the field and shadow professional experienced care workers and then they go out independently and then the first few weeks they have competency checks, spot checks, all sorts of things. so that we are happy, we get feedback from clients, how they're finding it, feedback from the carers, how are they feeling? So there's, a lot involved and a lot of them are getting enrolled on qualifications as well as they go along.

cause that really helps. and telling them about the career progression, you know, they come in as a care worker, there's lots of different avenues.

I think what could probably be better, and, and this is overall is, is really better marketing of that and I wonder if there's some sort of way that accountants could have some sort of place where they could say, Oh, here's all of the local funding that's available and I think that's actually quite difficult because what I tend to do throughout Walfich is navigate all these different places around the country and everyone's got different organisations, the way

they operate is slightly different, the application forms might be slightly different or, the amount of funding, what they'll fund for and so on. So having that sort of almost centralised approach would be really useful, but I think we need it. small businesses cannot take, often cannot take, risk in testing new things. They can't do the R& D, that research and development, they cannot do it because they cannot afford for things not to work.

You quite literally cannot afford it and so when you've got people like OxLEP around to say, well here's some capital for an apprenticeship and so on, or this might work and that, you know, wow, yeah, that is game changing if we use it properly, but actually, what we find is that you often don't even know it's there, or you do know it's there and you kind of scratch the surface and you really need to kind of get into these things. I think that's, from my perspective, the answer there.

So we're working with and identifying those large levy paying businesses within Oxfordshire and opening up conversations with them about how they are using and utilising that apprenticeship levy and particularly what you might know or might not know or what other businesses might not know is that if they're not utilising all of their apprenticeship levy, they can actually gift and pass on up to 50 percent of that allowance.

So it's a great way of taking your kind of employees through a journey, but potentially, so they come in and start as a Level 2 Adult Care Worker, potentially they could progress through to Level 3 and then to the Level 5 Lead Practitioner.

So we have apprenticeship matches where they're supporting your adult care workers in domiciliary care and care homes. We're also supporting the NHS. So we've supported nurse associate apprentices that are working in GP surgeries and medical centres and our most recent match is with the South Central Ambulance Service where we've been able to match and support 12 paramedic apprenticeships.

So it's got a real kind of huge spectrum, but the healthcare sector has really benefited greatly from these levy batches.

You know, we've had people, my colleague, I'm sure she won't mind me mentioning, Sarah, who started as an admin role and then she did recruitment, coordinating, she did some care work, marketing, and then she's now gone off and set up her own branch in Swindon Walfinch. So, you know, we're neighbours, we still work together and refer clients and stuff and then we've got a scheduler who started as a care worker, now she's been doing coordinating and now working on her Level 5.

Another carer who came on as a care worker, not from a care background, from hospitality, still uses his charming skills, which have helped, but he's also came on as a care worker, did his Level 3 and now he's our deputy care manager. So it's all about, career progression, upskilling and telling them their worth, you know, because it's important.

Perhaps you run a company or organisation that's looking for some specific help, or simply need a steer to the most appropriate business advice available. Why not try the OxLEP Business Support Tool? OxLEP Business Support Tool: OxLEP's Business Support Tool is here to help your company, whether you're just starting out, growing or ready to take on a new business challenge.

If you're looking for the latest advice and support, complete our business support tool today and get set to receive a bespoke action plan for your organisation. Head to OxLEPbusiness. co. uk to find out more. Let's pick up on the subject of training and development as well as apprenticeships, of course. Kam, tell us about the opportunities that you offer those entering the workforce.

So we've got to find out exactly what they want to do and then go down that route and it's important that whoever you send out to a certain client, you've got to make sure that they're going to be the right fit because if they're not, they're not going to be happy, they're not going to stay. So it's really important to figure out and understand what they want to do.

So I think it's looking at, really looking in detail and one thing I've learned from Amrit is he always looks at the little details. So, we have, Walfinch look at the small details about what the carer's needs are, what the client's needs are. It's not always just about the client's needs, it's about the carer's needs as well.

we've actually just, launched an accounting business, which is also in Oxfordshire and you think, well, that would be so wonderful for somebody to do some work experience, do an apprenticeship, maybe we send them on and say, look, okay, do you charter the, sort of exams and so on and really go on a journey with someone and then you can really, in a very focused way, develop the sort of person that you want, and sort of go on that long term thing with them. So I think it's very interesting.

We also connect franchisees up, we have a panel of HR teams and so we connect our franchisees up there to make sure that there's safe practice happening from an HR perspective, because that can be very tricky, to be polite. So...

So, it's trying to figure out, okay, how can I help this person, you know, do that? Then monitor it, see right, in the next couple of weeks, did that work? So I think it's just figuring out what's going to work for each individual, because everyone's different, everyone has a different skill set that they bring And teamwork. So sometimes, you know, things might not work, sometimes people don't want me to mentor them.

So they might want somebody else because they click with them better or think, you know, sometimes I feel a bit frightened, you know, like I'm a very easygoing person, but you know, somebody who's come new onto the team, where like my, my sort of, I'm a bit more distanced to the care staff now, because I've got people in place that will support them on a one to one basis. But I'm, I still want to be involved in that, but you know, somebody might feel more comfortable working with somebody else.

So I think it's seeing what works and how we can change.

So, how will it sort of resolve itself right now? It will resolve itself right now because people just work damn hard to do what they can. I don't think that in our sector, you would necessarily have providers and care workers that would go on strike and say, actually, we need to be paid better. Probably ought to, quite frankly, but they probably won't do that and so we'll just keep running and keep going.

But the problem with that is the long term issue and the long term issue then becomes well, you know, you're just running this car out and it's gassed out and the wheel will fall off at some point and so really what it needs is a total shake up.

It needs a shake up on how we provide funding, and the amount of funding and level of funding, you know, it's all good and well that we're talking about the government sort of making sure that care workers are paid better, but that needs to come from somewhere and right now, as far as I can see, we're asking providers to foot the bill and that can work with a certain type of provider that is focused on private work.

I mean we can stomach that and actually we already are probably outside of that because we pay care workers really well. But then there's other providers and colleagues of ours that run wonderful businesses but run them on local authority and government contracts and there just isn't the margin to do that.

so that whole funding aspect needs changing and the career pathways, we need to create more clear career pathways and I think that's a really important thing that we're not just saying you're just a care worker.

So I think it's ensuring the little details and making sure that we're respecting them and doing all those things and also spending one to one time with them, you know, I'd like to do it more often, but I don't always get the time, but, having a one to one catch up when I'm told that, oh, so and so is going through a bit of a difficult time or they're a bit short this month with money, you know, we will support them and doing things, spending time

with carers, you know, arranging an event, going bowling and arranging, a team building exercise or stuff. So I think all of those things are really important and, we've got so many, people from different cultures, it's a learning experience, you know, so we've got so much there to offer now. So I think having that diverse, care team has really helped as well.

They've just done it as a subject just in order to tick a box, so they've got three subjects, but there's not enough education, Health and social care, it's not just health and social care, there's so much to it. You know, there's so many different areas that, people can progress in. So, I think a lot more education needs to be done.

For example, I was at a roundtable meeting a little while ago and They were saying the nursing staff are really great, you know, people going in and becoming nurses, but they don't have any bedside skills, like bedside manner. So you know, they want to have them out, come out in the community and, you know, working as a carer for some, so they can learn those sort of skills as well.

So there's so many things that we could collaboratively work together and build on and I think that's where the future is.

I'm going crazy, I need adult talk and, you know, being a carer, you know, I mean, I've done care visits and I love going out seeing clients and whatever, you know, it's so fulfilling, you know, there's bad days and sometimes you have a day where, every client is, difficult on that day and it's just one of those things, but you know, going out and putting a smile on a person's face, can change your day.

able to do it but I can't cope, it's too much, it's too stressful, or it reminds me of when my mum passed away, it's too much, it's brought it all back. So I think, people need to be able to come out and spend some time, with people in the care sector to understand and learn, you know, there's going to be good days and bad days, are they able to cope with that? Come back and ask questions, what do you do if that happened? What do you do?

You might get all the training in the world, but you turn up at a client and they're on the floor and you're like panicked. Oh my gosh, what was my training? What was my training? You know, you've got to be able to be calm, right? Okay, they're on the floor, right? I'm going to call 999 and then I'm going to call my manager or the office or whatever. So I think, we've got to understand. each individual, what they're going to be good at.

But I think they need to come out and see, because especially the younger generation, they don't know, if I told my kids to come in and come and be a carer, they wouldn't have no idea. But my kids have come in, and done a bit of recruitment, been in the office environment, they've come to our events because I think it's important to expose them to that.

You know, you never know when my son's doing, my youngest son's doing psychology, and I'd love him to come in and be able to help us, we've got people, you know, whether the care staff or clients, you know, the mental health side of things. I think there's so much scope in health and social care, that has been missed.

All we need to do is meet the supply and figure out how do we slot into this sector? There are tremendous opportunities from all different angles, whether that's management, whether that's care work, whether that's recruitment, technology. It's a whole space that hasn't even been scratched in the sector really yet.

There's so many different ways of contributing to the sector and I think apprenticeships will absolutely help that and to providers and people are looking at businesses, having an apprenticeship, for example, or having a levy that will allow you to do that is just phenomenal because really for the first time you're able to hire somebody, test something out and say, Oh, actually, you know, I maybe don't need that hire. I'm not going to do that. Let's try this.

Oh, great, this has just changed my life. Let's invest in this and see what the return on that is. How great is that? You know, this is a great time to be in the sector. We've done it, we've hit rock bottom and the only way is up. So, so, you know, let's get on with it, I think.

Check out some of the previous editions, including how to build your personal brand with Paul Wilkinson of Paul Wilkinson Photography, top tips for starting a new business and how to become a successful entrepreneur with Fiona Reid, Associate Professor at University College London, and the importance of backing business with Emma Gibson, Senior Partner at KPMG Law in the UK.

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The OxLEP Business Support Tool can signpost you to expert help in a matter of minutes. Why not take a look? Find it on our website, oxfordshirelep. com. But for now, from the whole OxLEP team, and from me, Howard Bentham, it's goodbye.