Grim, difficult and relentless
I have been talking about the pressures being experienced by care staff since I began as a volunteer in Leeds CAB way back in 1982. I went on to work in the advice sector for a number of years, even chairing the Advice Services Alliance in 1992/3. I promoted the issues around older people and social care with Age Concern England for a decade, before joining Healthwatch in 2013, becoming Chief Executive of Healthwatch Warwickshire in June 2014 and now Chair of the West Midlands Region of Healthwatch
In all that time we have had a number of Inquiries, Strategies, White and Green Papers, new initiatives and new dawns. I have tried to remain consistently optimistic about the future throughout. As recently as this week I posted about being “Pleased that the Government is giving an extra £60m to support the adult social care response to COVID-19 in January. The Adult Social Care Omicron Support Fund is on top of the £388m infection control and testing fund already announced. A first step in the right direction”.
However I must admit that reading a headline saying that care staff face a “grim, difficult and relentless” situation as the Omicron variant of Covid-19 deepens pre-existing staffing shortages did slightly puncture my abiding sense of optimism.
Data from Skills for Care showed that vacancies across the sector rose from 9.2% to 9.4%, from November to December, up from 6.1% in May In the meantime the number of posts filled in services fell to 3.7% below March 2021 levels.
A National Care Forum survey showed that providers faced an average vacancy rate of 18% in an addition to a 14% average absence rate last week. Almost all (97%) of the respondents, who between them employ 98,000 staff, said remaining staff were working extra shifts, 81% were using more agency staff while 66% said they were working with lower staff levels than planned.
Those working on the frontline describe the situation today as ‘grim, difficult and relentless’.
The staffing gaps are feeding through into unmet need for care, reinforcing previous research from ADASS whose survey of not-for-profit care providers found that two-thirds of home care respondents had refused new requests for care, while 21% said they had handed back packages of care. Meanwhile, 43% of care home respondents said they had closed their home to new admissions.
These are devastating findings. Over 1.5 million people work in social care, caring for and supporting people at the heart of their communities. Everyone working in this sector should be recognised and valued for their dedication and professionalism in protecting and maintaining the health, dignity and independence of the people they support.
The staff are under huge pressure and this, it seems, is now feeding through into the experiences of those who use the services. The system is showing real signs of distress and is being described by some as broken, it is not meeting the needs of those who use services and is putting intolerable strains on those providing it.
These are perhaps the inevitable consequences of trying to provide this most personal and human of services on an industrial scale.
We need to re-imagine services. How they are delivered, where people get them, when they become available to people (in what circumstances), and perhaps most importantly what those services are and the role people have in determining what the support they need looks like.
More funding is needed certainly, 10 years of austerity have not helped. Better terms and conditions for staff including training and career development will help. A parity of esteem with the NHS from the NHS and the general public will also help care staff to feel valued.
At the end of the day it must surely be a partnership, a co-production between those who give the support and those who receive it, if we are to have a social care service that is fit for the future. It must also be closely aligned with healthcare provision and other influential services such as Housing.
I remain optimistic that we can do it, but it feels a very long way from being achieved at the moment.
Chris Bain 