Social care is in crisis and needs fundamental reform - Mike Padgham

Social care is on its knees, at a time when the NHS is suffering its worst crisis in living memory. A lack of available and adequately funded social care packages means some 13,000 people cannot be discharged from hospital beds even though they are well enough.

And the knock-on effect of that is that those hospitals cannot admit others who need those beds, leading to treatment in corridors and ambulance queues.

The main evidence of the long-standing crisis in social care is the ongoing staff shortage. We have 165,000 vacancies in the sector – some 10 per cent of the workforce. It is currently impossible to recruit into the social care sector, with pay and conditions being the biggest obstacle.

The social care sector can help more with the NHS pressures, but the recent funding announced by the government, whilst welcome, is only a short-term fix and needs to get to the frontline much quicker and without all the red tape and bureaucracy holding it up. If we are to solve the recruitment issues, we have to find a way to permanently recognise and reward our staff properly. We need more staff to enable people to be looked after in their own homes. It is estimated that there is an £8,000 a year disparity between NHS and social care staff. Unless the staff shortage is tackled, the crisis will deepen and social care providers will continue to struggle to fill their shifts today and tomorrow, let alone prepare for rapidly rising demand in the future, when we are expected to need an extra 480,000 care workers by 2035.

Care and nursing homes are closing and homecare providers are handing back contracts either because it is not viable to deliver them or they do not have the staff.

The ICG has published its Five Pillars of Social Care Reform document which sets out what it believes are the actions required to save the sector.

The five pillars are: Ring fence a percentage of GDP to be spent on providing social care to those who already receive it and the 1.6 million who can’t get it. Create a unified National Care Service, incorporating health and social care. Set a National Minimum Wage per hour for care staff on a par with the NHS. Set up an urgent social care task force to oversee reform. And fix a ‘fair price for care’ cost per bed and cost per homecare visit.

A lack of social care capacity to support the NHS is not the only reason the NHS is in difficulty. The crisis in social care shouldn’t be used as a scapegoat for NHS issues.

Social care needs its own fundamental reform to give people independence for as long as possible and the care they need, when and where they need it. We need to invest much more in prevention and more in social care and then there would not be so much acute pressure on the NHS.

Mike Padgham is chair of the Independent Care Group.