Health and Social Care Select Committee: Social Care funding and workforce
Carers Trust responded to the Health and Social Care Select Committee inquiry into social care funding and workforce.
Funding
Our response set out the urgent need to fund social care. We set out the evidence that both adult and children’s social care are both facing a funding crisis with massive impacts on carers and the people the care for. We called on central government to ensure local government has sufficient funding to enable councils to provide the social care people need – including supporting carers.
Carers Trust highlighted that the Coronavirus crisis has exposed the urgent need for social care funding reform.
Charities subsidising the health and social care system
Carers Trust also highlighted our concern that the lack of funding has meant charities are subsidising the health and care system.
We know that the UK Home Care Association has recommended providers receive a minimum of £20.69 per hour for Homecare services to allow for recent increases in the National Living Wage and to enable a sustainable homecare market. However, we also know that Carers Trust Network Partners, who are registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in England to provide regulated care for people in their own home, report receiving as little as £14.50 per hour from commissioners.
This threatens the sustainability of the sector, will lead to unpaid carers picking up more caring responsibilities and is a situation which urgently needs to be remedied.
Workforce
We know that many unpaid carers could not manage without the high-quality support of paid care support workers. The adult social care sector faces a workforce crisis with more than 122,000 vacancies, partly due to pay making the work less attractive. Experts also believe the workforce shortage in social care risks being compounded by the UK’s departure from the EU.
We believe the government’s proposed points based immigration system will further reduce the supply of paid care support workers in some areas, and that provisions should be made to allow paid care support workers to join the UK workforce from wherever they come from in the world.
It’s also important that the new funding settlement makes provision for improved pay and conditions for paid care support workers.
Further information
If you’d like any more information about the response – please contact our Policy team.
