Why the care sector in Yorkshire needs to come together and come up with solutions to crisis in the sector - Nick Swash

We are therefore going to launch the Yorkshire Care Alliance (YCA) in September this year and are reaching out to all care companies across Yorkshire to join us. The responsibility is ours to make a difference, and only by working together will we achieve those goals. Our pledge is simple – no membership fees and no lobbying, it is about everyone working together. Working together to build a collaborative network for social care providers, to build bridges between social care providers and unpaid carers. We want people to have somewhere they can reach out to for help and support.

Working together to share best practice and innovation opportunities and help to identify additional revenue streams that everyone can access for the good of the care industry together.

It is new, it has the possibility to be huge, but we need to start somewhere to make a difference. We want to learn from the best practice across the industry and build a collaborative network for social care providers through surveys, gathering views, an online forum and training.

The sector is currently very dysfunctional, so we want to build bridges between commissioners, social care providers and unpaid carers. We will do this by creating sustainable support networks and will function as an intermediary between the local authorities and Integrated Care Board.

In the past there has been a lot of complaining in the sector, but our aim is to turn this into positive action. We all know that change is urgently needed, so let’s facilitate that change ourselves and work together to do it. To do this we need other care organisations to join us ready for the full launch in September.

Whilst charities currently exist to provide community support, we want the YCA to be different and to pioneer change across the industry as a whole. To date the social care industry has lacked consistency, and that is exactly what we need to create. To quote Nelson Mandela, “Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference has never tried to fall asleep with a mosquito in the room”. We have to start somewhere to make improvements to so many people’s lives across the region.

We are also aiming to set up a Social Care Bank. Food banks and Baby banks exist across the country, but there is a huge gap in the market for the care sector. I was recently in a charity shop, and someone came in, donating packs of incontinence pads, which initially I thought a strange thing to do. But they cost money, and this person explained that they rarely had clothes to donate, so wanted to play their part helping others out. One of the biggest costs in care homes is sanitary pads, with some individuals needing changing several times a day. Why not set up a pop-up shop to trial the idea out and provide a practical solution for people in the community, particularly unpaid carers.

People could donate towards the ten most disposable social care items, desperately needed by many. Anyone with items like wheelchairs, walking frames and mobility equipment they no longer need could donate those. Most families don’t know what to do with them when a relative passes away, whilst others are struggling without them.

The possibilities genuinely are endless, so we are working over the next couple of months to put as much in place as we can, and to keep the momentum going for this exciting new project. There are so many areas of social care that ‘have always been this way’ and haven’t changed for years. Now is the time for change, and if the support isn’t forthcoming from other areas, we need to action it ourselves.

Fancy being part of this change and working together with us on this? With no fees to join you have nothing to lose, simply go to our LinkedIn page to register your interest today and become a founding member of an organisation that IS going to makes changes in the care sector – because we do genuinely care.

Nick Swash is the CEO of Yorkshire Care Alliance.