Page 54 - Unfair To Care 2024 - Who Cares Wins

THE WINS IN FOCUS
SECTION 7: THE SOCIAL CARE TRIPLE WIN
WIN 1: BETTER LIVES FOR PEOPLE WHO DELIVER AND DRAW ON SOCIAL CARE
Investing in the pay of frontline care and support staff will reduce staff shortages and reduce
staff turnover. That will help to ensure that
there is support by a consistent staff team who can build strong and informed relationships with the people they support – knowing the person well, developing trust, being responsive to specific needs and aspirations, promoting their wellbeing, and supporting them to
lead a fuller and more independent life.
Investing in social care workers through better, fairer pay within a proper career structure based on qualifications and experience will raise staff morale, reduce financial insecurity, and open up opportunities for progression
at work. This will have a direct impact on the quality of the care and support they provide to people who have the right to expect the best.
WIN 2: COST EFFECTIVE AND SUSTAINABLE CARE AND HEALTH SERVICES
A win for social care providers: Managing the churn and turbulence of the recruitment crisis depletes the resources and capacity of social care providers. The operational energy expended managing vacancies, training new colleagues, and constantly recruiting creates waste. Low pay is a false economy.
Fair pay for frontline care and support staff will make a direct and immediate difference to reduce staff shortages and reduce the extraordinarily high staff turnover rates in the care sector, which stood at 28.3% in 2022/2360. It will make working in the social care sector more attractive, increase staff morale and reduce staff burnout from the pressure of working in understaffed services and managing the challenges of life on low-pay.
This investment will reduce care providers’ costs in having to recruit and train a third of their staff every year and diminish the secondary market for significantly more expensive agency workers.
With stability, greater resources can be deployed to deliver further innovation, better services, and more ambitious support.
60. ‘The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’, Skills for Care, October 2023 54
A win for hospitals and the NHS: The increased availability of fully-staffed home care, supported living and residential care services will reduce the delays
in transfer of patients from hospitals to social care support. A reduction in delayed discharges will, in turn, reduce the backlog of people waiting for in-patient hospital treatment as more beds become available.
A win for the health and social care system:
A better paid, better staffed, and consequently stronger and sustainable social care market will help to ensure that the health and social care system as a whole works more effectively and efficiently.
Fair pay will provide better opportunities for staff to move more freely, both ways, between the NHS and social care services. Integrated Care Systems will
be better placed to develop joint health and social care workforce strategies that meet local needs
and priorities, with innovation at their heart.
Investing in the right care will also reduce the reliance on costly long term NHS inpatient facilities, which, for many, are the wrong support option and mean that they are separated from their communities and the people that they love.