This week, a report by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) on the impact of EU migration on the UK put forward serious concerns about social care against a backdrop of rising demand, stating the sector ‘needs a policy wider than just migration to fix its many problems’.
Being at the helm of a charity that for 75 years has provided care, accommodation and services to tens of thousands of older people across the UK, I can attest to the invaluable contribution being made day in day out by care workers across the UK who hail from all corners of the globe. How the social care sector can meet increasing demand without a considered and ambitious workforce strategy led by the Government leaves us as a sector with serious concerns of our own.
The dedication of the staff I see on a daily basis working with older people in our care homes, live at home schemes and within retirement living communities is extraordinary. The diversity of the social care workforce reflects the diversity of Britain, and it is more common than not that care workers go above and beyond to provide high-quality person-centred care. Across the adult social care landscape, however, we have a problem which sees no sign of abating, the recruitment and retention of staff.
There are on average approximately 90,000 vacancies in adult social care at any one time. We need the Government to work with us to raise the profile of careers in care, we need sustainable funding and after ignoring the issue for decades, we need this to be a priority. The issues are as varied as their solutions will be. For instance, it can be particularly hard to recruit care staff in rural areas, where there is a need and reliance for access to private transport. This is compounded when shift work means that reliance on public transport may be very late at night or in the early mornings. Provision of affordable housing for care workers also adds to the difficulties of recruiting.
Retaining staff is more of a pressing issue with turnover being at 27.7%, and as a sector we often find it is hard to compete with other large employers who can offer more competitive wages and reward packages including the NHS. MHA who fare slightly better than the average implemented a policy earlier in the year to pay at least the Real Living Wage to all of our staff members but of course this alone will not fix the problem.
As a clear necessity we will be pushing for special provision for our sector in the upcoming immigration bill that may help in recruiting staff after Brexit, but we will also continue to push for the ‘wider policy’ approach. It has long been an issue that social care is not always valued in society as much as other sectors and this is something that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care could put some resource in to addressing.
Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet to improve the situation of the social care sector and workforce issues in particular. We would like the Government to promote social care as a valid and valued sector where there are clear career development options and an appropriate remuneration scheme. The MAC report makes valid points about migration specifically, but also about the social care sector as a whole and we will be asking the Government to look into the issues raised in the report and vitally for funding to be addressed in the long awaited Social Care Green Paper, through a comprehensive long term approach, not piecemeal measures.
Older people in our society deserve and should expect high-quality, person-centred care and the sector urgently needs a workforce to meet this rising demand; sufficient in number and skills, trained effectively and valued sufficiently.