With ministers set to cut £250m of their promised £500m investment into the social care sector, staff are being driven to quit for better work conditions in other careers.
This was noticed by a local support worker, who claims that the supported accommodation head office she works for is receiving payments for hours that haven’t been completed.
She states: ‘Say a client pays for 6 hours a week, they have 6 hours of support in their care plan, but don’t get that support because there are only 1 or 2 staff members working. Yet head office still gets paid the full hours for full care. I’ve seen the care plans’.
The Care Quality Commission note that inadequate staffing levels are a cause of neglect and poor care, yet workers are on minimum wage and more than 165,000 care work jobs remain vacant.
‘I’ve had staff tell me “He’s had his hour, don’t give him anymore” but he clearly needs more’, she continues.
‘We do not have enough staff and we don’t do enough for our residents…We physically can’t’…Some of them call it a prison’. Less staff means less people per care plan, meaning a lot of residents in care homes/supported housing do not get their hours met and become isolated or neglected from adequate care.
The local support worker describes her work conditions stating: ‘The fact there aren’t enough care workers is because the level and standard of work can be both physically and mentally taxing. We need government-funded training, better salaries and perks within the job.’
Some 19 members of staff are on the ‘national living wage’ which has risen to £10.42 an hour. This doesn’t include food and travel expenses are only 35p per mile, with some carers doing up to 100 miles per week.
‘I’d just take them all out for meals and things,’ The local support worker says.
‘That would certainly cover all their hours! That’s why I take them [residents] shopping, it’s hours their entitled to and I feel awful for some of our isolated residents’.
A £300m local health and care integrated housing plan, according to the Health Service Journal, could also be terminated.
The Department of Health and Social Care did not disprove the report.
Giovanna Simioli (Photo cred: Creative Commons License)