Frantic efforts are being made to boost applications for nursing degree courses before next week’s annual Ucas deadline, following the partial U-turn just before Christmas on the scrapping of training bursaries. At a cost of more than £2bn, students are being offered new grants worth between £5,000 and £8,000 a year – although they must still pay tuition fees – in tacit recognition that the abolition of bursaries in 2016 was a big mistake.

The scramble to fill training places is central to ministers’ need to fulfil their general election promise to deliver 50,000 “more” nurses in England. And notwithstanding the linguistic and mathematical gymnastics that magically reduce that target to nearer 30,000 fresh pairs of hands, the investment is welcome.

But the commitment needs to be seen in context – not just in terms of the existing 320,000 nurses and midwives in the English NHS, nor even its 1.5 million workforce as whole,but also the 3 million people who make up the paid staff of the overall health and social care system. In that light, the biggest recruitment challenge by far is the projected need for 580,000 additional social care workers by 2035 to keep pace with the ageing population.

You may not have heard much of this, just as health and social care secretary Matt Hancock’s Christmas video tweet thanked all staff working in the NHS, but failed to mention the other half of his brief. But others, including prominent leaders of health service bodies increasingly say there can be no lasting improvement of the system unless social care is part of the story. And that doesn’t just mean finding a new way to fund care of older people while protecting property assets.

The final version of the NHS People Plan is expected early this year, setting out a five-year strategy for the health service workforce and working culture. But there will be no equivalent framework for social care and no national planning is going on. When this is raised, the explanation offered is that while the NHS is a single employer, there are 18,500 employing organisations in social care plus an estimated 75,000 disabled people who pay their own personal assistants.

The extent of the government’s contribution to addressing the social care recruitment crisis – and there are 122,000 current vacancies, let alone the 580,000 extra recruits needed – is a low-profile awareness campaign encouraging people aged 20 to 39 to consider a social care career. We have been here before, as one sector leader observes: “It’s the 15th charge of the Battle of the Somme when the previous 14 didn’t work – and it’s the same plan.”

Any meaningful workforce strategy for social care must address the sector’s endemic low pay, with a median average hourly rate of £8.10 last March and 24% of care workers on zero-hours contracts. While the newly announced rise in the adult minimum wage to £8.72 an hour from April may help, employers fear they won’t be funded for it and will have to cut jobs and non-statutory employment terms. A strategy must also tackle exploitative working practices, especially in homecare, and create clear career paths and more opportunities for professional development. Already one in seven care workers who change jobs quit the sector for the NHS. With a shiny new NHS People Plan on the way, but an empty shelf for social care, that number will only rise.

• David Brindle is the Guardian’s public services editor