Care crisis could have ‘horrific’ consequences
PILOT SCHEME LAUNCHED TO COMBAT 3,500 SOCIAL CARE VACANCIES
A CRITICAL shortage of social care workers will leave the North East facing “horrific” consequences if it cannot find tens of thousands of new staff in the coming years.
That is the warning of regional leaders as a new campaign is launched to tackle the growing shortage of care workers in Tyne & Wear.
There are currently around 3,500 vacancies in the North East’s adult social care sector, but an estimated 28,000 new jobs will need to be filled by 2035 to keep up with the growing demands of an ageing population.
Speaking at the launch of a Government pilot project to boost recruitment, which will include a jobs fair next week, deputy leader of Newcastle City Council Joyce McCarty said that more needs to be done to encourage young people to pursue careers in social care.
In Newcastle alone, a predicted extra 2,700 workers are needed in the next five years to cope with the escalating social care crisis.
Coun McCarty said: “The Government did make an announcement last week about some short-term funding that might help, but until we get the detail of that we don’t know what the impact will be.
“This campaign is about encouraging people to think of working in the care sector as a career. I don’t think it is promoted well enough, I don’t think it is paid well enough, so people won’t see it as a career opportunity.
“If there are 100,000 vacancies now, that is a crisis – in any other industry that would be a crisis.”
She added: “We have to do something because the consequence of not doing something is so huge, the outcomes would be so horrific if we couldn’t find staff to take these roles.”
Victoria Dare, deputy director of workforce strategy at the Department of Health and Social Care, told guests at the campaign launch that the Government knows it “cannot leave it to local employers and Local Government” to fix the care crisis on their own.
In Tyne & Wear, 7,400 people leave the social care sector every year out of a total workforce of 33,000.
Kim Cuthbertson, manager of St Anthony of Padua Care Services, said that the pressure on the region’s frontline care staff is “immense”.
She said: “I think we have reached a crisis. The recruitment side has to be the biggest push to get people back.
“I have worked for St Anthony’s for 20 years and in that time I have seen a lot of people coming and going. For the first 10 years people moved around from one care provider to another, but I’m not seeing that anymore – I see a lot of people leave care completely.
“Clients need the best and they are entitled to the best care possible, but the pressures that puts on frontline work forces is immense.”
The pilot recruitment campaign is running throughout November in Tyne & Wear and Gloucestershire, before being rolled out nationwide in January.
Fiona Brown, vice-chair of the North East Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, said: “What we really want is to see a long-term funding solution. We welcomed the money that we had in the Budget last week, but unfortunately that is for a two-year period.
“Short-term funding is exactly that – you can’t do something to make the market stable. If we increase our fees significantly, councils will be left with a hole in their budget in two years.”