A rallying cry has been issued by the county’s head of adult social services to Norfolk school leavers and job hunters: “Your NHS needs you.”
It comes amid warnings of a huge shortfall between staff and demand in the care sector already – a gap which is set to widen with Norfolk’s growing, ageing population.
Nationally, the government says an additional 500,000 new carers must be recruited by 2035 to meet the ever-growing demand for social care.
But James Bullion, Norfolk's director of adult social services, has warned this would mean years’ worth of school leavers would have to be recruited en masse to make up the numbers.
He added other sectors able to offer healthier wage packets than social care means the sector is facing an uphill battle
He said: "We buy around 53,000 hours of social care per week, but we need to buy around 63,000 and this means that people are not getting the care they need at the time they need it.
"Vacancies are a factor in that so we need to encourage people to come and work in the sector."
But Mr Bullion admitted that despite thousands of people already working in the sector, it was proving more and more difficult to recruit new workers into care roles.
He said: "We have a real job on our hands to sell the job and how it can amount to a career. I think there is a sense that it is a hard job to sell and that there is a crisis in care - so why would people want to do it?
"But that is what we have got to do as a sector.
"At the minute we are finding that sectors like health and retail are able to offer greater wages for jobs with similar levels of qualification.
"A health care assistant working for the NHS will on average earn around £2 per hour more than one working in social care. How can the sector compete with that?"
Susanne Baldwin, assistant director of workforce in adult social care at the council, said: "In Norfolk, we have around 24,000 people working in the sector - it is a huge sector which provides around 6pc of the entire workforce of the county.
"In the East, we have about a 9pc vacancy rate in the sector so it is a real challenge and it continues to be."
The sector has had to deal with a range of workforce offers in recent years relating to both Brexit and the pandemic.
Mr Bullion said: "We did lose some workers to Brexit and it has also made recruiting from overseas much more expensive.
Mrs Baldwin added that the pandemic had also contributed to shortfalls in overseas workers, with many migrants opting to return home at the beginning of the Covid outbreak to be closer to their families - while the vaccine mandate had also seen around 350 people leave the profession.
This all combined has left the sector fighting to plug gaps created in its workforce - while also juggling growing demand for services.
She added: "There is a finite amount of money we can spend so recruiting is not just as simple as putting up wages"
She said care providers were less able to be flexible with wages as the health, hospitality and retail sectors had been, as the sector had not received the same level of financial support from central government.
Instead, the sector needed to be more creative in how attractive it makes its vacancies, she explained.
She said: "We need to really focus on how rewarding the job can be and what career prospects it creates.
"There are lots of preconceptions about working in care, but we have seen people in the past go from entry levels to running their own businesses.
"Without fantastic social care services, the whole health system does not work - so it such an important thing for people to do."
How is the sector recruiting?
The county council has a website devoted to recruiting for the care sector - Norfolk Care Careers (www.norfolkcarecareers.co.uk)
The website provides a directory for care providers to advertise their vacancies, while also offering advice and information around working in the sector.
The council runs advertising campaigns on television, radio and newspapers promoting care work as a career and regularly holds recruitment workshops for the sector.
Mrs Baldwin said: "The image and branding of social care is something we've always really struggled with when you compare us to the NHS.
"When you look at things like Clap for Carers, even then the majority of the focus was on the NHS, but lots of the work you do in social care is not that different and just as rewarding."
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