Recruitment crises to last throughout the decade?

Care workers have been leaving our profession in their droves because of low pay, enforced vaccination, feelings of being under-valued, unbearable pressures through COVID, mental health reasons brought on by the distress of the past 2 years and the need for a ‘normal’ life.

Throughout 2021, some people working within health and social care exercised their right, at that time, not to be vaccinated. The Government subsequently enforced vaccination by passing regulations annexed to the Health and Social Care Act. These new regulations required registered providers to demonstrate their staff had been vaccinated or had an exemption. It is estimated the industry lost 25,000 people because of this enforcement action. The Government has now repealed this regulation https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/revoking-vaccination-as-a-condition-of-deployment-across-all-health-and-social-care

from 15th March 2022. Will those care workers return – not a chance!

Vacancy rates in social care have increased from 5.9%, in March 2021, to 10% in March 2022, while the number of filled posts is falling, according to the latest data from Skills for Care Skills for Care’s latest monthly data shows vacancy rates continue to rise in social care

“During the pandemic, vacancy rates decreased, with fewer jobs being available in other sectors and some care workers reporting they felt a loyalty to help the sector through the challenges of the Covid-19 outbreak. Following the peak of the pandemic, and as the wider economy opened up, vacancy rates have since been rising and are now higher than they were before Covid-19.”

The report goes on to state “At the same time, the number of filled posts has decreased by 4.6% between March 2021 and March 2022. The decrease was greater in care homes with nursing, which fell by 6%.”

Over my 35 years in social care, there has always been recruitment and retention challenges for the sector but nothing close to the scale we have now.

Skills for Care points out that since March 2021, when the wider economy began to open up, fewer people are taking up roles in the sector (starters rates are 4.2 percentage points lower) and more people are leaving (staff turnover rates are 4.9 percentage points higher).

The average number of sickness days, over the previous 12 months, has also recently started increasing. This comes as public restrictions on Covid-19 are lifted, people within social care are demoralised and exhausted. Their wonderful, heroic work is soon forgotten, and many cannot contemplate going through another pandemic or lockdown.

The lack of staffing has resulted in unsustainable care provision in many areas of the country resulting in falling standards and an average of 45 care contracts being handed back by providers each week. Thousands of people are going without care and support they have been assessed as needing.

Over the past year, the local authorities and the Department of Health and Social Care, have supported employers to tackle this challenge. They have ring-fenced a grant of £162.5 million to local authorities with the expectation that the grant will be fully spent on addressing local workforce, capacity pressures through recruitment and retention activity, by 31 March 2022. As I have highlighted, vacancy levels have risen in this time whilst starter numbers have fallen. This has been a huge failure and waste of taxpayers’ money. Until a fair price is paid to care providers, enabling them to deliver a quality, meaningful service to people, whilst at the same time remunerating their professional, qualified and dedicated workforce at a higher rate than comparable jobs in other sectors, we will never get close to full employment in this sector.

People who live and work in England have employment options where they are paid more money than care workers and are not expected to work weekends, bank holidays or long gruelling weeks during lockdown. Who would choose to work within social care under these conditions?

Let us not forget the managers who carry around a huge burden of responsibility working in one of the most regulated industries in our country. As if navigating their way through reams of paperwork and compliance requirements wasn’t enough, the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, states that the manager must ensure ‘Sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced persons must be deployed.” Therefore, if the home is understaffed, the mangers must become a care worker to ensure compliance and the needs of residents are met. In what other profession is a manager required to step down several rungs on the hierarchal ladder?

The Care Bill Solution.

The proposed Health and Care Bill https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3022, in its current form, will not uplift pay or conditions for anyone working in social care. On the contrary, it is likely to push more employees’ wages down.

The Government is proposing to set the cap for social care bills at £75,000, at which point, the local authority will then pay a “fair price” to the providers. In racing terms, it is a dead cert this “fair price” will fall a long way short of what providers are currently paying. In the southeast, I believe this “fair price” will fall short by as much as 60%, resulting is falling wages and an exodus of people leaving the profession and certainly not attracting younger people into it.

Of course, the Government still has time to amend and tinker with the Care Bill once they realise they have grossly underestimated the real cost of financing social care. If they do not inject an additional £1billion a year into social care, I predict, with some certainty, widespread closures, falling standards of care delivery and thousands more people going without the care and support they have been assessed as requiring.

I will return to this subject later in the year, once the detail of the Health and Care Bill has been finalised.