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Acute social care staff pressure threatens ‘tsunami of unmet need’ - CQC


The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has warned acute staff shortages in social care have pushed the sector to the brink of collapse. The regulator said its The state of health


care and adult social care in England 2020/21 report found the increasing vacancy rate risks a “tsunami of unmet need”. Data from information submitted to CQC


by providers of residential care shows the vacancy rate rising month-on-month from 6 per cent in April to 10.2 per cent in September. “While staffing is an issue for all sectors,


we’re particularly concerned about adult social care. We’re seeing rising vacancy rates, some providers having to hand back their registrations as they don’t have enough staff to deliver care, and examples of quality suffering due to lack of staff,” said CQC chief executive Ian Trenholm. The CQC is concerned that vacancies


may increase further as hospitality and travel industries speed up recruitment and offer incentives to new staff. Staff from adult social


are concerned about the financial challenges they continue to face as a result of decreased occupancy due to Covid-19. Profit margins declined through October


2020 to March 2021 to the lowest level since the CQC’s Market Oversight data scheme began in 2015, including earlier in the pandemic. Occupancy rates of non-specialist care


care may also take up vacant posts in hospitals – especially registered nurses, it warned. “If the new government funding is to


have an impact, it needs to be used to do things differently and to develop genuinely collaborative ways of working across all care settings. And staff need to be supported and rewarded,” said Trenholm. “In order to attract and retain the right


people to work in adult social care, there must be a sharp focus on developing a clearly defined career pathway – linked to training, supported by consistent investment, and better terms and conditions and pay,” he added. The CQC annual report meanwhile found care home providers and their representatives


homes fell from 86.6 per cent in March 2020 to 77.2 per cent a year later. Care home providers with a low


proportion of self-funders saw occupancy fall nine percentage points from the quarter ending March 2020 to the quarter ending March 2021, whereas providers with a high proportion of self-funders saw occupancy fall 11 percentage points over the same period. The reductions in occupancy occurred


against a backdrop of a relatively unchanged position in the number of registered care homes. Between April 2020 and March 2021, there was an increase of one nursing bed per 1,000 people aged 65 and over in England, with no change for residential beds.


Care sector does not help itself over recruiting staff – Keegan


Care minister Gillian Keegan has told a fringe event hosted by Age UK at the Conservative party conference that the care sector “doesn’t help itself” on attracting and retaining staff. “There’s massive zero-hours contracts,


how you can have that level of zero-hour contracts when you have such churn and such insecurity? Everybody needs security in their work, particularly at the lower income scale,” she said. In keeping with the new Tory line on business needing to break the ‘addiction’ to cheap foreign labour, Keegan said Covid, Brexit and other upheavals would be “helpful” to the sector in the long term. “It’s easy to blame a lot of this on


various things. What you need to do is work strategically to really value the people – people are the only asset any business ever has,” she added. “We were facing a massive skills shortage


anyway. Mostly it’s about what people are training for and where the skills are that we need, and the disconnect in those.” Keegan continued: “We have very, very


low unemployment figures - even after all this disruption – companies are going to have to work a lot harder to get talent, train talent and retain talent. That’s a good thing, actually, and a good thing for pay.” Keegan, who replaced Helen Whately in the


September cabinet reshuffle, said she is well aware of the challenges faced by social care. The new minister, who grew up in Knowsley


in Merseyside, spoke of her personal experience of social care with close family members and friends residing and working in care homes respectively. Keegan later addressed care sector


worries that the NHS would swallow all the £12 billion annual proceeds raised from the new health and social care levy. “Once the (NHS) capacity is built, and


we are looking at getting some residual increase in capacity, (social care) will then have a much bigger proportion of that levy. That levy will continue and obviously we have to make sure it continues to underpin this system we are going to build,” she said. The government’s Build Back Better –


Our plan for health and social care document published last month, contains a “clue” that extra funding for social care would also be raised from council tax, the minister added. The plan reads: ‘We expect


demographic and unit cost pressures will be met through council tax, social care precept, and long-term efficiencies.’ “I read that and I’m not sure what he’s


going to do but it seemed pretty indicative,” said Keegan.


November 2021 • www.thecarehomeenvironment.com 9


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