What will you do to address the diminishing care home provision on the Island due to staff shortages?
Staff shortages are a key issue but it is lack of funding from Central Government that is the biggest issue. IW Council recently offered local care providers an increase of 6% uplift when the care homes had to increase salaries by approximately 9% to retain staff.
Labour will create a National Care Service alongside our NHS and in partnership with Local Government. It won’t be a centralised body, but a different way of working. Reform will roll out over the next decade. A national framework, for example, would include stronger requirements on providers registering with the Care Quality Commission on financial strength, worker terms and conditions and quality of care.
The Tories have crashed the economy and adult social care is in crisis, so there is much to do with little headroom financially. Reform will be needed to improve pay and conditions immediately and to alleviate systemic problems in recruitment and retention.
Having an effective care system is essential for economic growth. In the way that childcare now strengthens family resilience and contributes to economic growth, the same can apply to adult social care.
Labour will:
Public-funded social care is only available to people with the highest needs and lowest means, creating inequality and leaving people vulnerable to high care costs. Between 2015 and 2022 the current means-tested system resulted in a reduction of 4% of funded recipients, whilst there was an 11% increase in requests for support. Demand is set to continue as the population ages. Labour will be fiscally responsible by linking our reforms to economic growth.
Social care provision is broken, because it is not funded at a national level. Local government cuts have really put pressure on Adult Social Care provision – including respite, residential and care at home. For areas in the UK with a large elderly demographic – like the Isle of Wight – this burden can be an overwhelming part of the local budget (25% I believe). It is inefficient and unfair to rely on local councils to fund social care – a national system needs to be introduced.
In addition to this the rising costs of provision and the need to raise wages to the level of a Living Wage, plus general inflation levels, and the huge numbers of vacancies in the sector (thanks, Brexit) have led to the diminishing provision. 1.5 million people are employed in the social care sector – that is more than in the NHS. And yet social care is not widely discussed at schools or colleges as a viable career option. We won’t replace social care with AI or apps – we need caring humans to step forward. There needs to be a clearer career progression from school.
So it’s not as straightforward as to say “do this and it will be addressed”. Green Party members have passed policy to ensure that social care is publicly funded and on a par with the NHS. Need, not wealth should determine access. But this doesn’t solve the wider challenges when it comes to costs, wages, vacancies and skills. I firmly believe that the care sector needs to be promoted more at schools and seen as the vital industry it is. We realised during Covid that carers are key workers – we need to now invest more in the industry.
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