Mayor – solve care crisis with better pay
ADULT social care in Cornwall faces a crisis, and now the Mayor of Truro – who has needed constant care for 30 years – has spoken out in support of the sector.
Truro city councillor Steven Webb, who was paralysed in a diving accident when he was 18, is never ten minutes away from one of his carers, two of whom have been looking after him for over 20 years.
Steven told the WMN’s sister website CornwallLive: “Care staff are tired, rundown and have had enough. There’s only one way of improving the crisis in social care and that is to pay carers more money. That way you will attract carers who are passionate about the job and ultimately save money for the NHS. One of the things that keeps me out of hospital is good care.”
More than 200 patients were reportedly in hospitals across Cornwall last week in need of social care packages in the community. Due to a lack of staffing and funding, care just is not available, which is causing bed-blocking within the NHS.
The mayor has 24-hour care provided by an agency, through the NHS, as he suffers from autonomic dysreflexia, a syndrome in which there is a sudden onset of excessively high blood pressure.
Common in people with spinal cord injuries, the condition could lead to a stroke or death within half an hour. He is clear about how much his carers mean to him: “Social care is about giving people their independence. I would not have become mayor if it wasn’t for that flexibility of care.”
Steven strongly believes that care should not be provided by private companies: “Care should not be provided by businesses which are profiting and making money for shareholders.”
He is cautiously optimistic about moves to ensure adult social care and healthcare sectors work closer together.
“If you took all that money that’s being spent on those patients blocking beds in Cornwall and ploughed it into care, you would be able to employ more carers,” he said.
“The Government has said it will plough millions into training carers, but you can’t train someone to be more empathetic. It’s something you’ve either got or you haven’t – that’s why it boils down to better pay. If you pay carers more money, you will get better carers.”
The mayor added: “My carers don’t just give me my independence, they give me my life and ultimately become my friends.”
Steven has had his own problems with the system in the past. From 2000 to 2010, he was constantly fighting to save his care package, after there was a move to reduce it to half an hour in the morning, lunchtime and teatime, with someone putting him to bed at night.
“That would have kept me constantly at home – I wouldn’t have had any freedom and independence. There’s no way I would have been able to become mayor,” he said. Fortunately, the situation was resolved.
‘The only way of improving the crisis in social care is to pay carers more money’ STEVEN WEBB